


Fickle Truths

by mizdiz



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cancer Arc, F/M, Government Conspiracy, Punk Scully, etc - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:47:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 76,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizdiz/pseuds/mizdiz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dana Scully never expected to live forever. With a cancer diagnosis, and a premature expiration date stamped right on her forehead, she'd settle for enough time to throw back a few beers, and maybe do one or two lab experiments. She's a rational person, after all. But when she meets Fox Mulder, her time sensitive life suddenly goes off the rails. As Mulder digs up her secret past, and the events leading up to her cancer diagnosis, he becomes convinced that maybe not all is as it seems. Fighting against the clock for answers, cures, and capital T Truth, college life turns into government conspiracies, aliens, and things that lurk in the dark. Scully's never believed in monsters, but sometimes knowledge isn't infallible, and even the most hardened truths can be fickle.</p><p>[COMPLETED]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for clarification, this AU takes place in present day. Current technology and such. No giant 90s cell phones or pantsuits.

It's weird watching people live when you're dying.

 

Like the woman by the drink table. She's blonde, and thin, and beautiful, and she runs her hand down a strange boy's shoulder as she laughs. She doesn't think about a future with this boy, besides the immediate. Maybe they'll kiss, maybe they'll fuck, maybe they'll even go for breakfast the morning after, but that's all too far away. Right now, their moment is suspended between this touch and the next. In Scully's experience, the only people who don't concern themselves with tomorrow are those who are certain there will be one.

 

Scully hasn’t “lived in the moment” since her diagnosis. Now her life is just upcoming numbers. Four hours until the next pill. Seven days until the next checkup. Three weeks until the next MRI. One year to live.

 

She drinks.

 

The stuff in her cup is some obscene, greenish mixture of what they’d called ‘jungle juice.’ She wishes she’d grabbed a beer instead, but this will get her drunk faster, and that’s the goal.

 

A pipe is passed her way, and she takes a hit. She never used to smoke, but, well, they don’t call it medicinal for nothing. Over the summer, before she’d convinced her parents to let her go back to school in the fall, her mom walked in on her smoking a poorly rolled joint of some ditch weed she paid too much for from the neighbor kid who knew she didn’t know any better. Instead of getting mad, her mother broke down into tears, mumbling something about, “you really must be in pain,” before kissing her forehead and saying, “let’s not tell your father about this.”

 

Now she has access to the good stuff—college kid stuff. She’s not sure where it comes from, and if she’s at a party where she doesn’t know anyone, she always says it’s her first time, and they let her smoke for free.

 

She knows some of the people at this party, but mostly they’re strangers. Her lab partner from human anatomy class invited her as an apology for showing up to lab hungover and throwing up on their day three experiment results. Scully almost made a snide comment about being busy Saturday redoing lab notes because data had been compromised, but her lab partner seemed genuinely sorry, and Scully isn’t vicious, just irritable. Besides, she likes parties. She doesn’t socialize much, but it gives her something to do other than pouring over schoolwork, trying not to think about the misbehaving cells in her head.

 

There are a few party regulars. Tom Colton, a frat boy with a criminal justice major who once got drunk at a party and told Scully he would “plow her until she couldn’t remember her name.” Sean Pendrell is also there. He and Scully frequent a lot of the same groups, and while he also may want to plow Scully into name un-recognition, he is much more subtle about it. Or at least he’s a gentleman about it. Or at least he usually brings the beer Scully likes to social gatherings, and so she considers him a friend.

 

The crowd is mostly upperclassmen, so the only people who are flat out plastered are the handful of freshmen, and one or two (or three or four) of the seniors who just can’t bring themselves to give a fuck about papers due on Monday.

  


The party hasn’t been going that long. No one has dissolved into hysterics yet, or challenged anyone to a wrestling match in a desperate attempt to prove one’s masculinity. Still, the night is young, and Scully’s got her eye on a secondary education major, who has spent the better half of an hour eyeing a guy Scully can only assume is her ex. Surely, she’s a shoe-in for a mental breakdown.

 

She sits like this for some time. It doesn’t bore her. She likes observing. Part of her—which might just be her therapist intruding on her thoughts again—thinks it’s because she’s trying to insert herself into the lives of the ones with life left to live. The truth is probably simpler than that. She’s always been a bit of a wallflower. She’s comfortable here.

 

Around eleven thirty, the Secondary Ed major starts yelling at the Ex, and a group of boys, including Tom Colton, start sloppily playing beer pong much too close to the couch Scully is sitting on, so she decides it’s time for a cigarette break.

 

She gathers herself and steps out onto the empty balcony. The weather hasn’t quite made the transition all the way into fall, even though it’s already early-October, so the air has a lingering humidity under the cool breeze, and Scully takes off her top jacket. She leans against the railing and drags on a cigarette, because she’s dying and she can, and she looks at the moon.

 

The only moon phase she can accurately recognize is a full one. She knows all the terms, but she always gets waxing and waning mixed up, which she knows is ridiculous because she can tell every bone in a human body apart by name, but she’s always preferred biology and chemistry more than astronomy, anyhow.

 

Still, she likes the night sky, and while she might not be an avid student of it, she has an appreciation for the vastness of space. She likes that her scientific laws are universal, plus there’s something about the incomprehensibility of space that makes her feel like she’s not missing out on as much as she feels like she is. At least not any more than anyone else. She may die long before the secrets of the void are fully discovered, but it’s a pretty safe bet everyone she knows will too. It’s a comfort.

 

“You trying to count all the stars or something?” A voice comes out of nowhere, knocking Scully out of her introspection. She jolts, turns, and sees a boy sitting in the shadows in the corner of the balcony.

 

“Jesus,” she says. “I didn’t know anyone was out here.”

 

“Sorry,” says the boy. “Nobody out here except the psych department’s most uninvited. To parties, that is.”

 

“So, what? Did you crash this one then?” Scully asks, recovering quickly.

 

“Surprisingly, no,” says the boy, getting to his feet. “I was actually invited to this one. My guess is someone lost a bet,” he adds, shrugging. He joins Scully at the railing.

 

Now that he’s out of the shadows, Scully can see him properly. He’s tall, and carries too much weight in his shoulders, making him slouch forward slightly. He has a defined profile (read: big nose), and is dressed to the nines in a sweater embroidered with a big alien face that he either made himself, or bought at some thrift shop. He has the potential to be attractive if you gave him a few years and some weights to lift.

 

“Why’d you even come, then?” Scully asks. “I mean, no offense, but if you’re here because of a bet, and you’re sitting alone outside, why be here at all?”

 

The boy raises his arm, flashing Scully the beer in his hand. “Free booze,” he says simply. Scully laughs in spite of herself, and the boy grins at her. “What about you?” he asks. “Why are you out here all alone?”

 

“Hm, well, some of the guests were attempting to turn the party into very loud couple’s therapy, and there were a few too many drunk frat boys hanging around, so I thought I’d get a little air.”

 

“Ah, yes. The magic of alcohol, always making people act like they’re the worst.”

 

“Magic has nothing to do with it. Alcohol just lowers inhibitions and judgment, so in actuality, alcohol makes people act more like themselves, meaning that, quite possibly, people are just the worst.”

 

Now the boy laughs. He throws his whole body into the action, and his grin is wide enough to show his teeth. It looks ridiculous on his lanky frame, and also a little endearing.

 

“That is very possible,” he says, dangling his arms over the railing. “But I’m way too stoned to think that deeply about it.”

 

“Oh, no, I agree, I’m completely baked,” Scully says.

 

“Gotta love a girl who gets philosophical when she’s high.”

 

“Well, I wouldn’t call it philosophy, necessarily. Perhaps pessimism?”

 

“Maybe it’s just Truth,” the boy says, capitalizing the “T” in a melodramatic voice that makes Scully roll her eyes even as she smiles. There’s a natural pause in the conversation. “Name’s Mulder,” says the boy, breaking the silence.

 

“What kind of name is that?” Scully asks.

 

“Well, it’s a last name. My first name is Fox.”

 

Scully laughs. “What kind of name is _that_?”

 

“I know,” the boy—Mulder—says. “That’s why I go by Mulder. Lesser of two evils.”

 

“Guess so.”

 

“You gotta name?”

 

“Scully, if we’re going by last names,” she says. “Dana if we’re going by firsts.”

 

“Scully? Like the sportscaster or something?”

 

“Or something,” Scully says.

 

“I like it,” says Mulder. “So what are you in for?”

 

“You mean what am I studying?” Scully asks and Mulder shrugs. “I’m pre-med.”

 

“Ooh, aren’t you something,” Mulder teases, but she can tell he’s impressed. “So, what, you want to be some hotshot doctor when you grow up?”

 

“Haven’t thought that far ahead,” Scully lies. “You said you were in the psych department?”

 

“For now, yeah. I’m mainly interested in behavioral science, so we’ll see where that leads me come grad school, which is a whole other can of worms. Where are you thinking of going?”

 

Scully immediately regrets this conversation. It’s the same one she’s forced to have with every new person she meets. “What are you studying?” is innocuous enough, but “what are you going to do with it?” never sits well. “Nothing,” she wants to say. “I’ll be dead before I ever get my degree.” The reverse isn’t any better. Scully wouldn’t call herself a jealous person, but she can’t help but feel a bit bitter listening to people talk about the futures their certain of. She supposes she could just tell the truth. She could tell the Mulder kid that due to a little mass in her nasal cavity, she will never get to be a doctor—but her premature expiration date is a little heavy to lay on someone she just met, and besides, if he told her, their conversation would be effectively over, and he would leave her with a few awkward stammers, and that awful, awful look that people only dish out when they simultaneously pity you and are glad they aren’t you.

 

“I don’t want to talk about school,” she says as casually as possible. “I mean, I’m high, I’m drunk, and it’s Saturday. Surely you can think of something more interesting to talk about.”

 

“Hey, I was just following social convention—majors, superficial future plans—these are things normal people talk about, right?”

 

She doesn’t miss the way he excludes himself from the normal person category. “I don’t like to devote my time to social convention,” she says.

 

“I don’t doubt it.” Mulder clicks his tongue a couple times, thinking. “Hm, okay, you want something interesting?” He points up to the sky, and Scully follows his finger. “See those three stars there?”

 

“I see a lot more than three,” Scully says unhelpfully.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “But those three in a row? Diagonally? The ones that look like half an arrow?”

 

She searches. “Mm, yeah, I guess I see them. ”

 

“That’s Orion’s belt. Once you find those three stars you can find the whole Orion constellation. It’s also known as the Three Sisters, although it’s misleading. The stars are named Alnitak, Anilam, and Mintaka, but Alnitak is actually two stars, the main one being a blue supergiant.”

 

Scully grins and has to resist the urge to say, “so what?” Instead, she says, “interesting,” in a voice she hopes sounds sincere. Mulder’s laugh suggests it doesn’t.

 

“I don’t know, you put me on the spot. That’s the best I can come up with on such short notice.”

 

“Most people don’t spout astronomy facts when they’re put on the spot,” Scully points out.

 

“Maybe that’s why I don’t get invited to parties,” says Mulder.

 

“Oh, Dana, there you are!” Scully’s lab partner steps out onto the balcony. She glances at Mulder, brow furrowing a little. “I just wanted to let you know I was heading out.”

 

“Already?” Scully asks, checking her watch. “It’s not even midnight.”

 

“Yeah, well, I got study group in the morning,” Lab Partner says unconvincingly.

 

“Are Coltan and those creeps hitting on you?” Scully asks.

 

“Endlessly,” Lab Partner admits. “But I do have to get up early. Don’t worry, you can stay. They’re cool with you being here.”

 

“Are you walking back to campus alone?”

 

“I was gonna.”

 

“I’d feel better if you let me go with you.” Scully barely knows this girl, and if she’s honest, she’s not even 100% sure on her name, (Miranda? Or maybe Melanie? She knows it starts with an M), but she isn’t letting a drunk girl wander around downtown by herself. She knows what can happen to a girl when she’s alone, even if she hasn’t been drinking.

 

“You sure? I mean, you don’t have to,” Lab Partner says, poorly covering up the fact that she’s just as uncomfortable with going solo as Scully is at letting her.

 

“I’m sure.” Scully turns to Mulder, who has his back against the railing and is quietly observing the interaction. “I gotta go,” she says. “Thanks for the star facts.”

 

Mulder grins again. “Anytime. You should hear the stories I got stored up about the Pleiades.”

 

Scully gives a soft, breathy laugh, and nods. She follows Lab Partner back inside, and doesn’t notice leaving her jacket behind.

 

\---

 

“Why were you talking to Spooky?” Lab Partner asks once they’re well down the street.

 

“Who?” Scully asks.

 

“Spooky Mulder?” Lab Partner says like that should be enough explanation. “That dude you were getting chummy with?”

 

“Didn’t seem that spooky to me,” Scully says, a little defensive, and a lot confused.

 

“He’s a class A freak,” says Lab Partner. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’ve never heard of him. He’s that guy that made a fuss about that dumb sorority pledge last fall. You remember? The one where they got involved in,” Lab Partner makes air quotes. “The Occult?”

 

“Uh, I vaguely remember hearing about that,” she says. There was a student death last year—that she remembers clearly—a sorority girl was found dead in the woods. Scully heard rumors it had to do with witchcraft, which she immediately ignored. “He was involved in that?” she asks.

 

“Not directly,” says Lab Partner. “But he is the one that kept those stupid rumors flying around. Apparently he thought it was all real.”

 

“What, that those girls were attempting to do witchcraft?”

 

“No, that they were actually witches.”

 

Scully laughs. “Right,” she says. Lab Partner gives her a look. “Seriously?” she asks.

 

“I told you, he’s a weirdo.”

 

“Seemed nice enough to me,” Scully says, and Lab Partner shrugs.

 

“Doesn’t mean he’s not a freak.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mulder spends the rest of the night and all of Sunday thinking about that red-headed girl named Scully. 

 

“Dana” he reminds himself once or twice, but it’s too late. He’s already got her name down as “Scully,” in his head.

 

It goes to show how starved he is for human contact, he thinks, that he’s so hung up on a girl he spoke to for ten minutes at best. Although he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t something about her that struck him. Not in some stupid, love-at-first-sight, sort of way, or even a lust thing, like he wants to get her into bed, even if she was pretty hot. It’s something else about her that he’s drawn to. He thinks maybe it’s her humanity—she looked at him like he was a person and not a freak.

 

God, he’s pathetic.

 

He reads and rereads a paragraph in an article for class, and can’t even pretend he’s paying attention to it. He pops a few sunflower seeds in his mouth and expertly removes the shells, spitting them onto his dorm floor. Disgusting? Maybe. But it’s just a perk of living alone. At least that’s what he tells himself when, for the fourth consecutive week, no one has replied to his roommate request.

 

Then there is the matter of the jacket.

 

Scully’s jacket is bunched up on the third stair of his lofted bed, and he’s not sure what to do with it. She was already long gone when he noticed it, and it seemed rude to leave it on the balcony, but now what’s the protocol? He could track her down to give it back, which would give him an excuse to see her again, but that seems intrusive and creepy, and he’s trying to avoid that image. He could wait for her to come find him, but what if she doesn’t, and then he had her jacket forever? That seems even creepier. He could take it back to the party house, but he would rather not interact with them, and besides, this jacket is the only thing linking him to Scully, with whom he feels their interaction was cut short.

 

His dilemma is answered for him, when around three in the afternoon, a knock comes at his door.

 

He doesn’t get a lot of visitors. Usually, if he does, it’s his RA coming to tell him not to put unsolicited posters on the bulletin board, which he always denies doing, though they both know he’s lying. It could be Frohike, Byers, or Langly, but he’s pretty sure they’re still out of town, and they almost never visit him on campus. He hasn’t posted any radical propaganda lately, and he can’t think of anyone else who would be looking for him, so he allows himself a vague sense of hope as he jumps off his lofted bed and goes to the door.

 

“Hi,” she says when he opens it. He can’t help the smile that spreads over his face. She looks just as unabashedly cool through sober eyes as she was when he was looking at her through a haze of pot and booze. She’s got on a flannel shirt, cut off shorts, and black leggings. Her boots are combat style and go up to the middle of her calves on her short legs. She got more jewelry on than he thinks most girls own. Her lips are red, and her hair is redder. She stands at his door, about a million lightyears out of his league, and seems thoroughly unembarrassed about it. Maybe that’s part of it—Mulder’s weird fascination with her. Most people wouldn’t be caught dead at the door of ‘Spooky’ Mulder’s dorm, but this girl is unperturbed. Either no one has warned her of the repercussions to her reputation for fraternizing with the UFO freak, or she’s above it. Or, even more incredibly, she might not think he’s a freak in the first place.

 

“Hey,” Mulder says, much calmer than he feels.

 

Let’s be clear—it’s not like he doesn’t have friends. He’s got a few, but most of them are either off pursuing Truth somewhere with no time for college, or they’re older than him, already settled into careers that are more important than socializing with an undergrad. University feels very isolating. The student body is very carbon copy, and for a school that boasts the “broadening of minds” on the front of their pamphlets, everyone seems pretty closed minded to him.

 

He also has a tendency to get off on the wrong foot with everyone. Either he says something a bit too strange, does something a bit too off-putting, or people know him from reputation, have already formed a judgment about him, and aren't about to risk the social suicide of getting to know him. 

 

That’s the problem with private college—there are few enough people that gossip travels fast.

 

So, no, he’s not exactly a sorry sack with no friends, except that here, he kind of is, and it’s lonely. Having someone wanting to interact with him feels special—even if it’s just to get back a jacket.

 

“Yeah, uh, you didn’t happen to see if I left my jacket on the balcony last night, did you? I went back to the house, but they said they didn’t find it.”

 

“I did, actually,” Mulder says, beckoning Scully inside. She hesitates a moment, and Mulder doesn’t blame her. They are, after all, effectively strangers. But Sunday afternoon’s got to be the least threatening time, and she seems to agree as she steps into the room—although she does leave the door ajar behind her.

 

“This, right?” Mulder says, taking hold of the jacket and trying to make it look like he didn’t ball it and hang it up in a heap.

 

“Yes!” Scully says happily. “Thank God.”

 

She takes the jacket and slings it over her shoulder. “It was my Dad’s,” she explains. “His military jacket. He gave it to me before I left for school.”

 

“I thought it seemed kind of big,” says Mulder. “Of course, I was completely baked last night, so I figured I just imagined you a lot tinier than you actually were.”

 

She is a very tiny person. She comes up right above his shoulders, and that’s while she’s wearing boots. And she’s petite—almost bony—and yet somehow she has a large, demanding presence that is in contrast to her size.

 

Scully is looking around his room. It’s filthy, with clothes and books and food strewn about, and his walls are covered in posters and maps and glow in the dark stick-on stars. Mulder doesn’t have the sense to be embarrassed, though, and instead of apologizing for the mess, asks, “How’d you find my room?”

 

“Turns out you’re not that hard to find,” Scully says, eyeing a map of Bigfoot sightings. She looks at him. “Seems like just about everyone and their dog knows ‘Spooky Mulder.’”

 

Mulder is used to the nickname, and in some ways, even takes it in stride. But he is struck by how much he doesn’t want the nickname on her tongue. Literally anyone else could call him that forever—even his own mother—and he’d be fine as long as she never said it again.

 

Of course, he doesn’t say this. He merely shrugs, and says, “What can I say, I’ve got a bit of a reputation.”

 

Scully looks like she’s about to say something else on the matter, but right then her nose starts to bleed.

 

“Shit,” she says, catching it with her hand. Mulder grabs a couple tissues, which she takes begrudgingly. Her face now matches her lips and hair, and she mutters an awkward, “thanks, sorry.” He now knows he was right about Scully not being embarrassed when she came to his door, because this is what Scully looks like when she’s embarrassed.

 

“Hey, no problem,” Mulder says.

 

“I, uh, I get nose bleeds a lot,” she explains.

 

“Dry air or something?” Mulder asks, leading her to his desk chair.

 

“Or something,” she says, sitting.

 

It’s awkward for a minute or two, while Scully tries to stop the bleeding. Finally, it slows up for the most part, and she balls the bloody tissues up in her hands.

 

“I see why you know all those space facts,” she says. It catches Mulder off guard.

 

“I’m sorry?” he asks, and she nods towards the poster straight across from her—the one with the blurry UFO and “I want to believe” written on it. It’s his favorite.

 

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” he says. Scully laughs.

 

“Flying saucers?” she asks skeptically.

 

“You never know,” Mulder says cryptically. Scully raises an eyebrow. “Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials, Miss Pre-Med?” Mulder asks, and Scully poorly suppresses a grin.

 

“Logically?” she says. “No.”

 

“Mhm,” Mulder says, unsurprised.

 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, laughing. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense. The distance and amount of time it would take to reach Earth, assuming there even was a habitable planet out there—it’s impossible.”

 

“Improbable,” Mulder corrects.

 

“If you say so.”

 

Mulder regards this girl carefully. She’s smart—that much is obvious—but she doesn’t seem very eager to believe in the fantastic. That’s okay, that’s alright, Mulder expects that at this point. What he doesn’t expect, however, is the way she’s regarding him. She thinks he’s nuts, sure, but she still gives him a look of respect—she recognizes his intelligence, the same way he recognizes hers. That’s enough for Mulder to want to dig a little deeper into what makes this strange girl tick.

 

“Tonight I’m going to visit a couple,” he says tentatively. “Who claim to be abductees.” Scully’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline, but she says nothing. Interesting, Mulder thinks. “Their story matches several I’ve heard before, and there have been a lot of reported UFO sightings in the area. I would think,” and he adds this part carefully. “That a woman of your scientific caliber would like to examine all the evidence before passing judgment.”

 

It takes Scully just a moment to process his unasked question. “You want me to come with you?” she asks incredulously. “To talk to some strangers about alien abduction?” She laughs.

 

“Why not?” Mulder asks, keeping his face straight. Scully falters at this. He can tell she’s searching hard for a rebuttal. It’d be easier for her if he was actually an idiot, but Mulder is as adept at debating as she is, and is prepared for the worst she can throw.

 

She settles for an exasperated, “You’re insane.”

 

Mulder smiles because it’s weak, and Scully purses her lips, because she knows it.

 

“And I mean you’re a stranger. You want me to go God knows where with you? To go see  _ more _ strangers?” 

 

“I’m pretty sure you could take me,” Mulder says, eyeing her combat boots, which could certainly render him powerless if delivered in the right spot.

Scully can’t very well dispute this—not without downplaying her own physical strength, so she pulls the last thing she’s got. “It’s a school night,” she says.

 

“I’ll have you back by nine,” Mulder promises. “Come on,” he says at Scully’s expression. “There are night classes that get out later than that. Live a little, will you? What do you got to lose?”

 

Something he says strikes a chord and Scully’s body stops being so tense from playing on the defense. Mulder knows he’s got her now.

 

“What the Hell,” she says with a melodramatic sigh. “It might be fun proving you wrong.”

 

\---

 

Mulder’s car is an old, stick shift, Chevy Cavalier that he isn’t exactly proficient at maneuvering.

 

The day has taken an unexpected turn, Scully thinks to herself, while Mulder alternates between shifting gears and fiddling with his car’s cassette player. He’s playing some droning instrumental music that makes her head hurt a little, but that also seems to fit the atmosphere of the night.

 

The sun has been setting early now, so even though it’s only six o’clock, the sky is starting to grow dark with the arrival of dusk. It doesn’t help that the day is grey and wet. A light fog has been hanging in the air since this morning, and hasn’t dissipated yet, giving an eerie vibe to an already questionable trek through the countryside with this strange boy.

 

“Where’d you say this place was?” Scully asks for the third time, ten minutes after they’ve driven out of city limits.

 

“Relax,” Mulder says. “I promise I’m not kidnapping you or anything. Their acreage is about ten more miles north of here.”

 

Scully isn’t threatened by Mulder—today he’s decided to wear corduroy pants and a shirt that just has “AREA 51” written on it in big block letters, and that’s not really intimidating—but there’s a voice in her head that tells her she should know better than to drive around with strangers. She doesn’t have a great track record with avoiding stranger danger, after all. But a bigger voice in her head reminds her that she’s supposed to be “living each day as if it’s her last,” because pretty soon it will be, and who the fuck cares if this Mulder kid decides he wants to stab her with an ice pick somewhere in a cornfield. It’d almost be a relief to die of something other than cancer.

 

She has been warned about “Spooky Mulder,” though. Not just from Lab Partner (she really needed to figure out her name—they’d been paired together since September), but from a couple girls on her floor who knew Lab Partner, and the guys at the party house who she talked to when she went back looking for her jacket.

 

(“Why would Spooky have it?” one of them asked.

 

“I was talking to him last night. He might have grabbed it, I don’t know.”

 

“Man, I only invited him because I’m trying to get him to help me with my psych homework. He lives up in Harper, but I’d stay away from him if I were you. I heard he was involved in that chick’s death last year, or something.”)

 

Scully assumes it's hearsay, and doesn't particularly rely on the word of men who think being able to shotgun beer is résumé worthy, but she also knows that reputations don't come from nowhere.

 

“You know, a lot of people told me to keep away from you,” Scully says. Mulder glances at her before looking back to the road.

 

“What for?” he asks. “They afraid I’m gonna sacrifice you to the Devil, or make you chase aliens with me?”

 

“To be fair, you are kind of doing that second one.”

 

“I don’t think I could really make you do anything,” he says honestly.

 

“Probably not,” Scully agrees. “I don’t know, a lot of them seemed to be concerned with a thing that happened last year. Something with that sorority girl who died?”

 

“Patricia Borman,” Mulder says immediately. “No one ever remembers her name.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“Do you want the newspaper version or my version?” Mulder asks, picking sunflower seed shells out of his mouth and tossing them out the cracked window.

 

“Both.”

 

“The newspaper said that it was a sorority pledge gone wrong. They said that the girls had taken Patricia out into the woods and pretended to do a witchcraft ritual as a way of scaring her. They wrote it off as typical pledge stuff.”

 

“Then how did she die?”

 

“Good question. Her body was found the morning after the pledge, completely unmarked, except for the fact that she was missing her eyeballs.”

 

“Her eyeballs?”

 

“Yeah. Whatever got her, she evidently didn’t see it coming. Forensics were at a loss to explain it. There was no cause of death. It ended up getting written off as exposure.”

 

“What about her eyes?”

 

“They said an animal must have pecked away at them while her body was out there. Nine hours on a warm, spring night, a healthy girl dies of exposure and has her eyes eaten out of her skull in a way that made it seem like they were scooped right from the sockets.”

 

“How do you even know any of this?” Scully asks.

 

“I know some people,” Mulder says cryptically.

 

“Well, okay, then what do you think happened?”

 

Mulder glances over at Scully once again. “I think that one of Patricia’s sorority sisters was a witch, and that she performed a ritual that killed her.”

 

Scully blinks. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

 

“I looked into it, Scully,” Mulder says sincerely. “I think the journalists were right, I do think that the ritual was set up just as a scare tactic—except that one of them was an actual witch, and had them do an actual spell. I talked to all the girls separately. They all told the same story, about doing the ritual, and then there being a blinding white light, and hearing screams. They said they all ran, and no one even realized Patricia was missing until early that morning when a jogger found her body.

 

“They also all told me that Rayla Cartwright and Patricia had recently fought over a boyfriend. Rayla’s guy left her for Patricia, and she was pissed. Bam, right there, motive. And think about it—if you were a witch that wanted revenge, a sorority pledge would be perfect. You could write your ritual off as a game, and your whole sorority is there, so no one is immediately going to go pointing fingers at you. Ingenious.”

 

“Okay,” Scully said slowly. “Let’s say that, just for the sake of discussion, black magic is real. How did Rayla get this power? And why would she want to kill Patricia? I mean, I get being upset about a cheating boyfriend, but I wouldn’t kill a girl over it.”

 

“I told you, I talked to all the girls, and that includes Rayla, Scully. She’s not exactly what I would call well-adjusted. She spent most of our conversation dodging my questions and talking about her wedding plans to marry her ex now that Patricia was out of the picture.”

 

“Did you go to the police and tell them any of this?”

 

“Well yeah, but you don’t even believe me, why should’ve they? I mean, after I went to them, they did decide to do a background check on Rayla Cartwright, but by then she had already left the university.”

 

“What do you mean left?”

 

“I mean she left. No one knows where she went. ‘Sfar as I know, no one has heard or seen from her again.”

 

“And that’s it?”

 

“That’s it. Patricia’s parents tried to sue the university, claiming their daughter’s death was somehow the result of the sorority pledge, but they didn’t have any evidence to support it. None of the other girls were charged with anything. The Dean slapped on a rule of new limitations for sorority and fraternity pledges, and brought in a couple grief counselors, and that was that.”

 

“That’s awful,” says Scully.”

 

“Yeah, it’s not great,” Mulder agrees.

 

“I know, but regardless of what happened, that girl’s parents won’t ever really know what happened to their daughter. I mean, if you’re gonna lose a kid, out of the blue and for seemingly no reason is probably the worst way to do it.”

 

“I don’t have any kids, but I’m pretty sure no matter how you lose a child, it’s gonna be devastating.”

 

Scully thinks about the day her doctor presented her with her diagnosis, and the way her mother immediately burst into tears, and her dad gripped her shoulder a little too tight as his lips drew together in a thin, white line.

 

“I don’t doubt it,” she agrees.

 

\---

 

When they pull up to the house, Mulder’s abductees are already waiting for them. They’re sitting on a porch swing, and wave as they get out of the car. He’s thin and bony, and she’s a little heavyset, but pretty. They’re holding hands. Their yard is full of pinwheels and garden gnomes and other knickknacks, and Scully isn’t entirely surprised that these are the people they’ve come to see.

 

“Mr. Mulder, that must be you,” the man says with a thick farm accent. “So glad to finally see you in the flesh.”

 

“And you’ve brought your girlfriend?” the woman asks, nodding towards Scully.

 

“Oh no,” Scully says quickly.

 

“Just a friend of mine,” Mulder says brightly. “Scully, this is Marjory and Frederick Burnstein.”

 

“Marge,” says the woman, reaching out to shake Scully’s hand.

 

“Freddy,” says the man, doing the same.

“I’m Dana,” Scully says. She glances at Mulder. “Or Scully, I guess. That’s what he calls me.”

 

“Like the sportscaster?” asks Freddy.

 

“Like my surname,” says Scully.

 

“Why don’t we bring this party into the house,” Marge says, opening her screen door. A big, black Labrador tries to bound out onto the porch. “Buster, stay!” Marge says, kneeing him gently, pushing him back inside.

 

They follow Marge and Freddy into the house. The place is small, and made to look smaller by all the stuff they have crammed in it. None of it seems particularly useful. There are at least five bookcases filled with small, glass ornaments. The walls are covered ceiling to floor in weird, abstract art and framed black and white photos of whom Scully assumes are family members. They have wind chimes and plants hanging from nails and hooks all around the house. All of the furniture looks as though it was purchased at a thrift shop, and none of it matches. In one corner they have an old, wooden side table that has a cage full of finches. If it weren’t so bizarre, Scully thinks she might get claustrophobic in a house like this.

 

“Please, have a seat,” Marge says, ushering them onto a lopsided loveseat. “Can I get you anything?”

 

“No thanks,” Scully says, and Mulder nods in agreement. Marge looks a little putout, as though she’s not sure what to do with herself. She decides to take a seat next to her husband on the couch adjacent to Mulder and Scully. Scully notices that Marge has a facial twitch in her left eye.

 

“We’re real thankful you decided to speak with us,” Freddy says after a moment. “We don’t get a lot of people who believe our story, you know.”

 

“That’s why I’m here,” Mulder says, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a tape recorder. “Is it alright if I record this? It’s easier than transcribing everything by hand.” Both Marge and Freddy give their consent, and Mulder presses play and sits the recorder on the coffee table between them all. “Alright,” he says, sitting back on the loveseat. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

 

Marge looks to her husband, who looks back at her as he says, “Well, I was the first to be abducted. Long time ago, when I was just a kid. They took me right outta my bedroom, and they’ve taken me loads of times since.” He turns towards Mulder. “It’s not always exactly word-for-word the same every time, but the gist is pretty consistent. They always come and get me at night. Every time, there’s a bright light in my room, and I’m paralyzed. Time seems to stop, you know. Then, once they got me, they take me up on their ship and perform all sorts of tests on me. Agonizing tests, where they stretch my body in ways it aint supposed to stretch, and poke and prod at everything you can think of. Beats me what the Hell all those tests are for, but eventually they finish, and then I find myself naked as the day I was born in a field somewhere with no memory of how I got there.”

 

“And how many times did you say this has happened?” Mulder asks, totally rapt by the conversation.

 

“Oh geez, well, gotta be at least a dozen, at this point.”

 

“And you Marge?” Mulder says. “How many times have you been taken?”

 

“Twice,” Marge says. “Just twice. That first time about six years ago—that’s where I met Freddy here.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Scully interrupts. “You met your husband on a spaceship?” Out of the corner of her eye she sees Mulder glance at her.

 

“Well, not on the spaceship exactly,” Marge says. “I don’t actually know if I saw him up there or not, I was so out of it, coming in and out of consciousness because of the pain. But we woke up in the same field together. And, well, you share an experience like that, it’s hard not to be drawn to one another, you know?” She leans over and kisses Freddy on the cheek.

 

“Tell me about this last time, Mr. and Mrs. Burnstein,” Mulder says. “You said over the phone that it was different.”

 

“Oh yes,” says Freddy. “See, usually, we get picked up in our homes with no warning or anything, but this time we went and caught our own ride, if you get me.”

 

“It was the darndest thing,” Marge interjects. “Like we was in some sort of trance or something. Both Freddy and me, we just got up in the middle of the night, didn’t say a word to each other, and just walked deep into the woods, still dressed in our PJs.”

 

“You told me you weren’t the only ones there.”

 

“There was about seven other people there,” says Marge. “I recognized at least two of them from my trips into town, but mostly they was strangers. All of them were all dressed in their night clothes too, like they had the same trace as we did.”

 

“And how long did they take you this time?”

 

“Six months,” Marge and Freddy say together.

 

“Longest ever,” Freddy adds. “All our plants had wilted by the time we got home and we had to buy all new ones. We don’t know if it lasted so long because they’re done with us, and it was just one big, final experiment, or if they’re prepping us for something bigger. But I just knew that this was out of the norm—more than usual—and your name popped up among some of the others, so I thought I’d give you a ring.”

 

“Glad you did,” Mulder says sincerely. “Tell me, you don’t happen to know where in the woods you were abducted, do you?”

 

“Oh no, I know exactly where we were. I’ve had the coordinates stuck in my head since that night. I can write them down for you if you’d like.”

 

“Yes, please,” says Mulder. He’s face is stoic, but Scully can see his eyes dancing, as though he’s absolutely delighted by what he’s hearing. She, on the other hand, can’t figure out how Mulder expects to present any of this as evidence. This is nothing more than a couple of hicks’ fairytale, and she feels foolish for getting drawn into it.

 

She sits uncomfortably for the remainder of the conversation. Marge and Freddy thank them about a hundred times, and insist on them taking a gift basket they threw together right then, which contains a porcelain cat figurine, three bruised oranges, and, for the love of god, a brisket wrapped in plastic wrap.

 

“What’d you think?” Mulder asks once they’re back in the car, which quickly begins to smell like leftover meat.

 

“You mean besides the fact that they were a couple of lunatics?” Scully asks.

 

“They were a little eccentric,” Mulders says, and Scully scoffs. “Maybe a little more than a little, but that doesn’t make them liars, Scully.”

 

“It certainly doesn’t make them truth tellers either.”

 

“Maybe,” Mulder says, glancing out the window. He reaches in his coat pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. It’s the coordinates Freddy gave him. He clears his throat. “Well, I know I promised to get you back home by nine o’clock,” he says. “But I also took you out here to get evidence. We’ve just heard testimony—I think the logical next step would be to do a little investigating on our own, don’t you think?” He waves the paper in her line of sight.

 

“Mulder,” she says warningly.

 

“Hey, Scully, say the word and I’ll drive you back to campus,” says Mulder. “But, you know, you’d be missing out on a potentially groundbreaking scientific exploration.”

  
“I think you're stretching it. Most likely I’d be missing out on a nighttime trample through the woods looking for little green men,” she says. Mulder shrugs, seemingly nonchalant, but he’s still got the paper dangling in front of her face. She rolls her eyes so hard it actually hurts. “Fuck it,” she says. “Just fucking drive before I change my mind.


	3. Chapter 3

Marge and Freddy Burnstein are utter weirdos, Mulder knows, but he also believes they’re telling the truth. He believes it in the very core of his being, and maybe it’s not aliens, but it’s something, and that’s a something that he wants to understand. 

 

It’s not like he hasn’t done this before. Freddy was right—he knows a handful of the local abductees, and he’s done the same thing; interviewing them, compiling their stories, trying to make sense out of them. So far he has nothing definitive, but that’s just motivation to keep looking.

 

It’s very run-of-the-mill for him, except for the fact that today he has company. He sneaks a glance at Scully, who is staring out her window as the countryside rolls past her. He knows she doesn’t believe a word she just heard—to be honest, he’d be surprised if she had—but _she’s_ _still_ _here_. She’s still letting him take her even further into this plot. He’s got a compass on his dashboard, and a vague intuitive sense of where he’s going, and she’s along for the ride. 

 

That, in itself, is a goddamn supernatural occurrence.

 

“What do you expect to gain from this?” Scully asks, breaking the silence. “I mean, even if by some wild chance you’re right about all this—so what? What happens then?”

 

“Why do any scientific discovery?” Mulder counters. “Why figure out the speed of light, or the rate of gravity? Light is still gonna travel, and gravity is still going to hold us to the ground, regardless of whether or not we understand it, so why bother? Science is about knowing how things work, and how we coexist in the universe, Scully, and I want to learn as much as I can.”

 

Scully turns away from her window to look at him. He can feel her eyes on his profile, and he wills himself not to blush under the scrutiny. “I know that,” she says softly. “I’m in a science field, I appreciate the nature of scientific discovery, but just—why this? Why aliens? Why UFOs? When there’s so much hard science that hasn’t been fully examined on  _ this _ planet, why go looking for anomalies on others?”

 

“It’s complicated,” Mulder says.

 

“I’m not exactly going anywhere,” Scully says.

 

Mulder considers his next move.

 

The truth is that the truth is deeply personal, and he’s been here before. He’s opened up about this, and he’s been laughed at, and it hurts. He can take the stabs when they’re at his expense, but this concerns family, and that’s where he’s sensitive.

 

But then again, Scully has thus far proven herself to be quite an untraditional sort of person. He doubts that even if she doesn’t believe him (likely), she also won’t throw it back in his face like it’s trash. Maybe this is the ultimate test of her character; to see how she reacts.

 

“It has to do with my sister,” he finds himself saying. “She went missing when we were just kids. Up until recently, the memory was foggy. I was put into contact with a man, a professional, who performs deep regression hypnosis, and through this practice I’ve been able to more fully understand what happened that night.

 

“I was twelve years old. My sister was eight. I was watching her while my parents were at the neighbor’s house. We were playing a game, and arguing over the TV—I don’t know, just sibling stuff, you know? Suddenly, there was this…blinding light outside the door, and I felt this... this presence in the room. I remember being paralyzed, unable to help my sister as she screamed for help. And then just like that, she was gone. Vanished.” He pauses; swallows. 

 

“We never found her. It tore our family apart. No one would talk about it. I went off to school, and over the past couple years, I’ve stumbled upon people with similar experiences. I’ve made a lot of connections, even within the government because my father’s name holds weight in certain circles, and I’ve been getting ahold of information I, uh, heh, probably shouldn’t have. And Scully? I think that whatever happened to my sister was part of something bigger. Something that the government knows about. It’s hard, you know, I don’t have a lot of authority, I mean I’m 21 years old and don’t even have a degree, but…” he trails off.

 

“But what?” Scully asks.

 

“But I’ve gotten a taste of the Truth, and now I want it all,” he says simply. 

 

He waits for Scully to laugh, or to hold back a laugh, which would be even worse, but she doesn’t. Instead, she takes him completely by surprise by reaching over and very gently gripping the hand that’s on the stick shift. It is incredibly brief—if he wasn’t paying attention he would have missed it—but when she pulls away his skin still tingles where the contact was.

 

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says. “I don’t know what I’d do if something like that happened to my sister. Is that why you’re out here? Are you still looking for her?”

 

Mulder doesn’t know what to say for a minute. He doesn’t know what he expected from her, but this reaction has completely blindsided him. Eventually, he clears his throat, and says, “That’s part of it, I guess. Maybe you were right about what you said about Patricia. Maybe losing someone and not knowing why is harder.” Neither says anything for a solid minute. “I know you don’t believe that my sister was abducted by aliens,” Mulder says finally. His eyes are on the road, but he knows Scully smiles.

 

“I believe that your sister was abducted by someone,” Scully says nicely. “And I don’t for one second blame you for exploring all the avenues.”

 

Mulder knows it’s a thinly veiled way to say, “yeah, I still don’t believe in aliens,” but the fact that she took the time to consider his feelings as she phrased it is enough for him not to care.  _ Where the Hell did this girl come from _ ? he thinks for what feels like the millionth time. He’s known her for a total of about 20 hours, and already she’s shaken his entire worldview. 

 

It’s unnerving, and a little bit amazing, and he’s so scared of losing it as quickly as it came.

 

\---

 

They pull up to the edge of the woods. The trees are tall and looming. The lingering fog hangs low between the trunks and branches. Scully finds herself remembering a story her brother’s used to tell to scare her when she was little, about a young girl who wandered into the woods and got eaten by a wolf. The young girl then became a ghost, and would lure other children into the dense tree line, making them meet the same fate just so that she’d have other ghosts to keep her company.

 

An involuntary pang of anxiety fills her belly, and she immediately squashes it down. She chastises herself for being foolish—ghosts, not unlike aliens, aren’t real. She straightens her back as Mulder reaches over her to open the glove box, and pulls out a flashlight.

 

“Ready?” he asks.

 

“Do you even know where we’re going?”

 

“Into the woods,” Mulder says unhelpfully, as he pockets the compass sitting on his dashboard. “Come on.” He gets out of the car, and Scully reluctantly follows. What’s the worst that can happen, she thinks to herself. It doesn’t exactly make sense to be worried about getting killed, does it?

 

So she keeps her face neutral, trailing close behind Mulder, as they enter the woods.

 

Night creatures scramble away from the brightness emanating from Mulder’s flashlight. They trample over the uneven ground, and Scully’s glad she’s wearing boots when they walk through the wet dirt trail that has turned to mud. They travel in silence for the most part, except for occasional, breathy, “ows” when they trip over raised tree roots, or get scratched by a surprise, low-hanging branch. Periodically, Mulder checks his compass, and once or twice takes an abrupt turn that Scully has no choice but to trust.

 

After ten minutes, Mulder stops in his tracks and Scully just about runs into him. “Here,” he says.

 

“Here what?” Scully asks.

 

“This is where Freddy and Marge were abducted.”

 

“Allegedly,” Scully adds under her breath, taking in her surroundings. “There doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary in this part of the woods, Mulder. Looks the same to me.” And it does. There is an owl calling nearby, and tiny bits of vegetation are poking up from patches of wet earth.

 

“Then you don’t know what you’re looking for,” says Mulder, though from the dim light of the flashlight Scully can see him furrowing his brow and she thinks maybe he doesn’t know what he’s looking for either.

 

Because there’s nothing else to do, she joins Mulder in examining the woods around them.

 

“What’s this?” Mulder asks after a few minutes, holding up a handful of something. Scully goes up to him to inspect it.

 

“Ash?” she suggests.

 

“From what?”

 

“My guess would be fire.” She doesn’t exactly understand Mulder’s fascination with the powdery, grey substance in his hand. It’s not run-of-the mill, fireplace ash, but she’s not terribly concerned with the semantics. In fact she’s starting to feel remarkably dumb for going along with this for so long. “Mulder, there’s nothing out here,” she says.

 

“If it’s a fire then why is nothing around the ground burnt?” Mulder asks, ignoring her statement.

 

“Campfire?” says Scully, exasperated. “A controlled fire of some sort? I don’t know. Why does it even matter?”

 

“It matters because we’re looking for things that are out of the ordinary,” says Mulder matching Scully’s frustration. “Whatever this is—” he gestures with the handful of ash. “It’s out of the ordinary.”

 

Scully opens her mouth to tell Mulder that, honestly, he’s grasping at straws at this point, and maybe it’s time to go home, but before she gets a chance, a bright light engulfs the both of them. Scully jumps, startled, and if you asked her later, she would never admit it, but the first thought that runs through her mind at this moment is, ‘abduction.’

 

“What the hell do you two kids think you’re doing out here?” a gruff voice calls out from behind the light. A silhouette of a man approaches, leaves crunching beneath his feet and as he draws near, Scully can make out that he’s a bulky man carrying an industrial flashlight.

 

“Just taking a walk through the woods, sir,” says Mulder, and Scully is impressed by the innocence in his tone.

 

“Well, you’re trespassing on private property,” says the man, and Scully can see now that he’s got a rifle slung over his back.

 

“Maybe we should go, Mulder,” Scully stars, but Mulder talks over her, saying,

 

“I was under the impression that these were community woods.”

 

“The impression you’re under is wrong,” says the man bluntly. “So take you and your little girlfriend back to your car, and leave.”

 

Mulder starts to protest but the man puts a hand on his rifle, and Scully watches Mulder deflate a bit. A couple of unarmed college kids weren’t going to win if this turns nasty.

 

Instead, he takes a quick glance at his compass, and motions Scully to follow.

 

She’s not sure what possesses her to do it, but the man is looking at Mulder, and Mulder’s back is turned, so no one sees her reach down and scoop up a handful of the ash and slide it into her pocket.

 

They stumble out of the woods faster than the came. They aren’t exactly running, but it’s faster than a powerwalk, and Scully—with all the various medicines coursing through her, and all the energy her body is spending on fighting the little lump in her forehead—isn’t as in shape as she once was. They get back to the car, and she tries to hide the fact that she’s completely winded. She prays her nose doesn’t start to bleed. Twice in one day might garner questions, and she’s not up for that conversation right now (if ever).

 

“Who the fuck was that guy?” she asks, hoping it will distract Mulder from her heaving chest.

 

“Dunno,” says Mulder, leaning next to her against the car, his voice annoyingly steady. “But he was obviously trying to keep us from seeing something.”

 

Scully has her breath back for the most part, and so she quirks an eyebrow. “Is everything a conspiracy to you?”

 

“I’m not crazy, Scully,” Mulder says defensively. “But I know for a fact that those woods are public domain. And did you see his shirt. He had a sheriff’s badge pinned on his chest. Why would a sheriff be out policing people who are doing nothing wrong?”

 

“Because we’re a couple of college kids?” Scully says. “Because even if we weren’t doing anything wrong, it probably looked like we were up to no good?”

 

“Maybe,” says Mulder in a voice that suggest he’s unconvinced. “Still something feels strange. I want to come back here.”

 

His words hang in the air, and Scully realizes there’s an unasked question buried in them. “Will you come back here with me?” he doesn’t ask.

 

Her logic says no. Hell no, in fact, but her instinct and sense of adventure likes this strange conspiracy theorist, and maybe, against better judgment, she could be persuaded to come out here again.

 

She not committing to anything, however, so instead she says, “Well, we’re not finding anything else out tonight, and it’s already a quarter past nine. We should head back.”

  
If Mulder is disappointed with her response, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he concedes with a nod of the head, and goes over to his door and gets in. Scully does the same. He starts the car, and jerks them along the gravel road, leading away from the woods—Mulder unskillfully maneuvering his beat up, stick shift car, with Scully, mildly amused, at his side.


	4. Chapter 4

The car breaks down about twelve miles outside of city limits.

 

Well, it doesn’t break down, so much as it runs out of gas. (Mulder’s gas gauge has been stuck on a quarter tank for about three months now, so he fills up on the guessing system, and tonight he has guessed incorrectly.)

 

As his car rattles to a stop he can feel Scully’s eyes on him, and he can’t bring himself to match her gaze. It figures, really, that this would happen tonight. He’s finally met someone who respects his intellect, who doesn’t look at him as though he’s got several screws loose, and if the trample through the woods or the man with the rifle hasn’t pushed her away, stranding her in bum-fuck nowhere at night probably will.

 

“What was that about getting me home by nine?” Scully says. The point is moot, of course, as it’s already way past nine, and to be honest, they never were going to get back in time. Mulder has done similar treks before, and is aware of his tendency to get side-tracked. He had hoped, though, that he’d be able to get her back to campus a little closer to nine than he’s going to now. They hadn’t passed a car in ages, and even if someone did pull over to help, there’s still the matter of getting gas in the car. 

 

They might be here for a while.

 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he says.

 

“What do we do?”

 

“Wait for help, I guess. It’s too far to walk.” Mulder hazards a glance in Scully’s direction. She certainly doesn’t look happy, but she’s not exactly pissed either, so it could be worse. He watches her as she looks out her window.

 

“Doesn’t look like anyone is rushing to save us,” she says.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mulder says again. “I know this isn’t how you usually spend your Sunday nights.”

 

“Oh, I don’t spend any night of the week like this,” Scully says. “But at least is was,” she searches for a word. “Interesting.”

 

“Interesting?” Mulder asks.

 

“Interesting,” says Scully again. “Not to be confused with, I don’t know, ‘enlightening,” or ‘mind-blowing,’ or in any way ‘truthful.’ But interesting nonetheless.”

 

Mulder can’t help but laugh.  _ Who is this girl _ ? “Maybe you don’t believe everything I do, but at least you respect the journey,” he says. “You’d be surprised at how rare that is.” Scully gives him a look that suggests she probably wouldn’t be that surprised.

 

Suddenly she shudders, and wraps her arms around herself. “It’s cold,” she says.

 

Mulder wouldn’t call it ‘cold,’ exactly—maybe brisk—but the longer the car is off, the more uncomfortable it gets. And Scully is much thinner and more susceptible to the cold than he is, and again he feels guilty for stranding her in this situation.

 

“I have a blanket in my trunk,” he says. “I’ll get it for you.”

 

He pops the trunk and grabs the fleece blanket he stuffed back there ages ago after an all-nighter in a cornfield looking for UFOs. He decides he’s not going to tell Scully that part.

 

He heads back to the driver’s side and glances up as he does. He’s taken with the view. The light pollution out her is minimal, and the fog and clouds are finally beginning to dissipate. He goes around to the passenger’s side instead.

 

“Come ‘ere,” he says, opening her door, and Scully quirks an eyebrow. “I wanna show you something.”

 

Scully is skeptical, which is unsurprising, but she gets out without protest, and that is. Mulder directs her attention to the sky. “You know what that constellation is?” he asks.

 

He expects her to roll her eyes and say something about dragging her out into the cold to spout astronomy facts, but instead she says, “It’s the Big Dipper.” At Mulder’s questioning expression she says, “Give me some credit, I’m not totally inept. Everyone knows the Big Dipper.” She pauses, before adding, “I used to go camping with my Dad when I was little. We had this special spot that we were convinced no one else knew about, out on the edge of the lake. Every night before getting in the tent, we’d lay in the grass and stargaze. He always would point out the Big Dipper and say, ‘If we ever get separated, follow those stars, let them lead you to the North Star, and the North Star will lead you home.’” 

 

“Your Dad was right,” Mulder says. “Those two stars,” he gestures towards the edge of the Big Dipper’s spoon. “They point directly to the tail of Ursa Minor, or, if you prefer, the Little Dipper. Polaris. The North Star.”

 

“Show off,” says Scully with a small grin. “It was a pretty pointless lesson anyway. I never really knew what I was supposed to do once I found the star. Like, yeah, it points north, but that doesn’t mean shit if you suck at cardinal directions.” 

 

Mulder laughs. “Yeah, I don’t know, using stars for guides isn’t for everyone.”

 

“Bet you could navigate it. You were pretty handy with the compass. I was almost certain you were just leading me aimlessly into the woods to murder me or something.”

 

“Do I seem like the murdering type?”

 

“If you did I wouldn’t have kept following you into the middle of nowhere. It’s the corduroy pants; they’re your saving grace.” Scully wraps her arms around herself again, only tighter, as a cool breeze blows by.

 

Without thinking, Mulder drapes the blanket over her shoulders. At her surprise he realizes the intimacy of the gesture, and compensates by stepping a few paces away to give her space. Slowly, she pulls the blanket around her body, and mutters a “thanks.”

 

Mulder goes over and lifts himself onto the hood of his car. He leans back and looks up at the sky. 

 

Scully’s indecision is palpable—he can feel it in the air. After a moment, she too pulls herself onto the hood, at a careful distance away from Mulder.

 

“I love physics,” she says after a moment. “I really do. The whole idea that everything in guided by a set of physical laws? I’ve always found it...beautiful? I suppose would be the word. But I’ve never given much thought to astrophysics, beyond knowing physical laws are universal. I have this tendency,” she admits softly. “To look at everything through the lens of a scientist. The shot of vodka at the party is going to get me drunker faster if I haven’t eaten because it’ll go straight to the small intestine and get metabolized by the liver if there’s no other digestion happening. The car will stop working if it has no gas to convert to energy, the same way a person will starve without sustenance. Polaris only points north because of its position in relation to Earth’s axis. Everything—even the unknown, I’m certain of it—can be explained by science, and that’s beautiful. But lately, because of certain...events, I’ve seen the value in perceiving the world like this.”

 

“Like what?” asks Mulder. Scully doesn’t answer right away.

 

“Like how it is superficially; like what it is aesthetically.” She takes a moment to gaze at the sky, and then breathes, “there really is a lot of beauty in the world, isn’t there?” 

 

The innumerable stars overwhelming the sky, with the moonlight shining down on them, catches and illuminates the red in Scully’s hair. She watches the sky, and Mulder watches her. 

 

“There really is,” he says. 

 

They sit in companionable silence for quite a while, both taking in the scenery. They are jolted out of their peace when a pair of headlights light up the road. They both wave their arms and flag down the driver, who is an elderly man with an elderly woman in the passenger seat.

 

“You two need some help?” the old man asks kindly. 

 

Mulder takes one last look at the sky before he answers, “yes.”

 

—-

 

It’s nearly midnight before Scully finally gets back to her dorm. She should be irritated, she knows, but instead she can’t shake a frustrating feeling of excitement. In fact, she feels a little giddy, in a way she hasn’t felt in months. Years, even. ‘Giddy,’ is not a term generally associated with Dana Scully.

 

But she is, and it’s strange, and a little wonderful. Her night has been a series of minor disasters, and all she wants to do is laugh about them.

 

She realizes that for the first time since the doctors labeled her as a hopeless case, she spent an entire evening unconcerned about it. Mulder’s antics—ridiculous as they may be—served as an effective distraction.

 

Well, that would make anyone giddy, she supposes. Any dying person, at least.

 

“Where have you been all night?” Scully’s roommate, Monica, asks when Scully comes through the door. “Partying on a Sunday?”

 

“No,” Scully says, and then is at a loss for how to follow that up. Most people would give Scully some serious side-eye if she were honest with where she’s been. The safe bet is to just say she was at some study group that ran over, but then, Monica isn’t exactly ‘most people,’ and is, in fact, a little strange herself. They were assigned to the room at random, and Scully has had to get used to Monica’s candles, and crystals, and the whale song tape—literal cassette tape—she listens to on repeat to fall asleep at night. Monica would drive Scully crazy if she didn’t remind her so much of her sister.

 

She decides to try her hand at the truth.

 

“I was looking for UFOs in the woods with this kid named Fox Mulder.”

 

“Seriously?” Monica asks. Scully knows her surprise isn’t with the idea of UFOs, but at the idea of Scully looking for them.

 

“Well, Mulder was in the woods looking for UFOs,” Scully clarifies. “I was just sort of…tagging along.”

 

“Did you find anything?” Of course that’s Monica’s next question, as though there’s a possibility that they actually happened upon an alien just hanging out in the woods.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Scully. “Of course we didn’t.”

 

“Fox Mulder,” Monica says thoughtfully. “Why do I know that name?”

 

“’Spooky’ Mulder is what everyone around her seems to call him.”

 

“Oh!” Monica says. “He was the one who investigated that girl’s death last year. The witchcraft death.”

 

“Patricia Borman,” Scully says, remembering Mulder’s irritation at the girl being nameless, and finding she is just as uncomfortable with it.

 

Monica has a fascination with magic and the occult, so Scully shouldn’t be surprised that she’s familiar with Patricia’s death, but she finds her cheeks reddening a little anyway. Scully maintains a very cool and rational demeanor, and while the opinions of others doesn’t get to her much, she still is aware at how strange it must seem—someone like her getting involved with someone her total opposite. So when Monica says,

 

“I didn’t know you guys were friends,” Scully feels bad for how quickly she says,

 

“We’re not.” She amends by adding, “I mean, I barely know him. We met last night at that party I went to, and he asked me to go with him tonight.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Um,” Scully says, because honestly she’s not sure why Mulder wanted her to tag along. “He wanted to prove me wrong about the existence of extraterrestrials, or something. I don’t know, it’s a long story.”

 

“I take it he failed?”

 

“At what? Proving aliens exist? Yeah, you could say he failed.”

 

“You’re sure he doesn’t just have the hots for you?”

 

“Of course he doesn’t,” Scully says confidently. “I mean, probably he doesn’t,” she says, a little less sure. “I mean, I’m not his type. I’m too…?”

 

“Anal?” Monica suggests, grinning.

 

“Logical,” Scully corrects with a scowl. She then yawns, and becomes aware of how totally exhausted every inch of her sick little body is after all the ruckus she’s had today. Monica notices, and her face falls.

 

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

 

Monica knows. It only seemed fair to tell her, since they’d be living together for the school year—or as much of it Scully was going to be able to get through. It would be too hard to explain away the nosebleeds, the constant napping, the occasional vomiting whenever her meds got changed—all of it, really. So besides her professors, who need to know why Scully misses class so often, Monica is the only one on the entire campus who knows Scully is dying.

 

“I feel fine,” Scully says. “Just tired. Always tired,” she adds with a sad smile.

 

“Maybe you should go to bed,” Monica suggests, and Scully nods in agreement. She appreciates how Monica manages to care about her well-being without constantly emitting a sense of pity. She goes to the restroom to get ready for bed, dragging her tired legs down the hall.

  
It wouldn’t matter, she thinks, if Mulder has the hots for her. She’s not going to live long enough to have that kind of relationship with anyone.


	5. Chapter 5

She doesn’t see Mulder for two weeks.

 

Fall has finally set in completely, and the days become a blur of tedious schoolwork as midterms approach. She stays late at the lab several nights, and comes back to her dorm so exhausted, she doesn’t have the energy to think of aliens, UFOs, or the strange boy who chases them.

 

But at night, after popping her pharmacy’s worth of meds, she lays on her bed, and in the few minutes between wakefulness and sleep, wonders if he is thinking about her at all. She worries that he might think her absence is commentary on his character—that maybe she thinks he’s “spooky,” like everyone else. She doesn’t quite understand the feeling in her gut that makes her want to reassure him that she doesn’t think that. As she slips into a heavy, medicated sleep, she reminds herself that she doesn’t owe this near-stranger anything.

 

She runs into him again on a Tuesday. She’s on her way to the doctor. A stipulation for allowing Scully to go to school is that they had to find a reliable, local oncologist, who she has to see regularly. She has scans today, and she’s nervous. Scan days are the worst, because it’s the most tangible reminder of her illness; that her tumor is still there, and it’s growing.

 

So she’s in a bit of a state when she runs into Mulder on the quad. For a split second she considers pretending that she didn’t see him, and just walking past with her head bowed, but it’s not like she doesn’t want to see him. She just doesn’t want to answer any questions about where she’s going or why.

 

Mulder catches her eye, and her decision is made for her as his face breaks out in a smile. She sees a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, and she knows she was right to worry about her absence. This is not a kid who is used to being liked, and she feels bad for making him think he drove her away.

 

“Fox Mulder,” she says as cheerfully as she can muster. “Long time no see. I thought about stopping by, but I didn’t know if you were off chasing spaceships or not.”

 

“Nope, no spaceships lately,” Mulder says, coming to a stop in front of her. “I just figured I scared you away.” He’s joking, but he’s also not, and she again gets a pang of guilt.

 

“You didn’t,” she says sincerely. “I’ve just been busy with midterms, and I’ve been, uh, I’ve been sick, so I was too tired for socializing. Haven’t even been to any parties! I’m actually going to the doctor right now. I’ve got an appointment at one.” She smiles to make it seem like no big deal. She’s good at this—telling the truth without actually telling the truth.

 

“You okay?” Mulder asks.

 

“I feel fine today,” she doesn’t lie. “Just going to the doctor to make sure I stay that way.”

 

“Did you catch that flu that’s going around or something?”

 

“Or something,” Scully says.

 

“I won’t keep you, then,” Mulder says with a noncommittal smile.

 

“Yeah, I should probably get going.” She pauses and adds, “Uh, I don’t know what your class schedule is like, but I always get lunch off campus on Thursdays, if you want to…come with?”

 

“Yeah,” Mulder says quickly. “Sure thing.”

 

“Meet me outside the student union at eleven thirty?”

 

“I’ll be there,” and Mulder sounds so earnest that she can’t help but smile. She nods a curt goodbye, and heads to the parking lot where she keeps her car, still nervous for the appointment, but with a little bit of weight lifted from her shoulders that had been there all morning.

 

—-

 

Mulder replays the conversation about twelve hundred times.

 

He had assumed his interactions with Dana Scully had come to an end after he dropped her off on campus with an awkward goodbye, tired from the day, and not quick enough on his feet to think of a way to trick her into agreeing to a future meeting. He went to bed that night telling himself he should be happy with the time he got.

 

So running into her on campus has shaken him to his core, and the fact that she invited him to lunch is more than he ever hoped for. He worries for a while that maybe she only offered the invite because she feels sorry for him, but he manages to disregard the thought—he hasn’t known Scully long, but he understands her well enough to know that she doesn’t do things she doesn’t want to do.

 

He sits through his logic class and barely hears a word. (Something about categorical propositions—he doesn’t really know or care, he’ll just bug someone for notes the day before the test.) He tries studying in the library for a while, but he only gets through a page of notes before he gives up. He eats dinner in the cafeteria, and retreats to his dorm, wishing that tomorrow were Thursday, and not knowing what to do with himself until then.

 

The question is answered for him, when he opens his door and finds that a large, manila envelope has been slipped under his door. A rush adrenaline hits him, and he closes his door quickly behind him, picking up the envelope and heading to his desk.

 

He gets these sorts of things a lot. They get slipped under his door, or sometimes, stuffed into his dorm mailbox. The contents are never the same. Sometimes it’s a newspaper clipping, or some official document with things underlined and highlighted. Sometimes it’s just instructions, like to watch the news at seven, or tune into the radio at nine.

 

Mulder carefully tears open the envelope and removes what’s inside. Today, it’s an obituary of a woman he’s never heard of, from a newspaper from some town in Pennsylvania. Her name is Betsy Hagopian, and the obituary says little about her, except that she lost her fight with cancer this past weekend, and that services for her will be held Thursday at one, at a church that is about an hour’s drive from campus.

It all seems very insignificant, but Mulder knows better than to think that it actually is. Mulder has what would best be described as informants. They’re people in high places who know of William Mulder’s government work, and have heard through the grapevine of his son’s ardent search for the Truth. 

 

Mulder knows that his Dad was involved with shady things during his career, but he doesn’t know the details, nor the extent—just that it has granted him an access he otherwise wouldn’t have. These informants have power, but even then, their power is limited. They can only tell Mulder things in vague clues that Mulder has to figure out on his own. Normally, he comes up empty handed, or only with a sliver of the information he wished he had. Even still, he meets every new shred of evidence with the same fervor, the same optimism.

 

Mulder rereads the obituary several more times, trying and failing to find something hidden between the lines—trying to understand why he should care about this dead stranger. Finally, he folds up the obituary, sighing as he does so. He wonders if Scully will be up for accompanying him to a funeral.

 

—-

 

“How have you been sleeping?” Scully’s doctor asks.

 

“Constantly,” she says.

 

“Have you been eating?”

 

“When I’m not vomiting.”

 

“Do you have any pain?”

 

“Only when I’m sober.”

 

Scully doesn’t mean to be rude—she knows her doctor is simply doing his job—it’s just that she’s tired. And not just sleepy tired, (though that too)—she’s tired of doctor’s visits; she’s tired of monitoring an illness that’s going to end up killing her anyway; she’s tired of medication; she’s tired of pretending to be well; she’s tired of not being able to have a normal relationship with anyone, because it’s not like she has any burning desire to get with the Mulder kid, but it’s not fair that it’s not even an option for her; frankly, she’s tired of everything.

 

“How’s your mental state these days?” asks the doctor.

 

“Fine,” she lies.

 

The scans and check up take the better part of her afternoon. She gets back to campus, exhausted and achy, wanting nothing more than to smoke a bowl and go to bed. Her doctor promised to call when they got the results. She wanted to tell him she’s not in any rush. If her cancer is worse, she almost would rather not know. She thinks that if she absolutely must die of cancer, it would be so much better if she could just slip away one night with no warning.

 

Of course that’s not how it works. The tumor has to metastasize—has to push into her brain, pushing her survival chances right down to a great big zero—and there’s nothing she can really do except wait for it to happen. She takes her cocktail of drugs that the doctors hope will maybe slow down her tumor’s progress, but even that is uncertain. The type and placement of her tumor make everything difficult. Scully’s always been a little rebellious, and a lot stubborn—she guesses that it’s only fitting that her illness be the same way.

 

She curls herself on top of her comforter without eating dinner. No weed tonight; she has none left, and hasn’t the energy to track down someone who does. Monica is in class until late. She has the room to herself—if only she had the motivation to do anything other than sleep. At least, she thinks, slipping out of consciousness, she has lunch with Mulder this week to look forward to.

 

—-

 

Thursday is the first really cold day of the year. Mulder has to dig out his winter coat from a mostly unpacked box of stuff he meant to put away when he moved into the dorm in August. He dresses all in black today, and throws his coat over his somber outfit. He has three classes today, and he’s going to skip all of them. He heads to the student union to meet Scully.

 

Scully, with her tiny frame, looks even tinier in the gigantic jacket she has hanging loosely on her bony body. Her deep red hair is sticking out from underneath a black knitted hat, and her hands are in a pair of thin gloves. She smiles at Mulder when she sees him.

 

“Shitty weather,” she says as a greeting.

 

“Yeah,” he agrees. On top of being cold and breezy, he had heard rumors of snow. He actually doesn’t mind winter all that much, but his raggedy old car doesn’t drive on ice that well.

 

“Where do you want to get lunch?” Scully asks.

 

“Uh, about that,” Mulder says, involuntarily looking away from Scully’s face. He knows that if he looks her in the eye he’ll end up telling the truth, and then she’ll never come with. “Something’s actually come up. I have to go to a funeral this afternoon,” he says.

 

“Oh no!” Scully says sincerely. “I’m sorry. Somebody close to you?”

 

“No, no, just a friend of the family’s. She was sick for a while, so it wasn’t a big surprise…” he trails off.

 

“Well, that’s no problem. I understand if you have to take a rain check. Lunch will always be there another day.”

 

“I was actually wondering,” Mulder says, glancing back up to gage Scully’s reaction. “If you’d be willing to come with me.”

 

“Go with you?” Scully asks. “Where? To the funeral?”

 

“I know, I know, it’s a weird request, you don’t have to say yes,” he says. (He does not say, “I mean, you said yes to UFO hunting, and that was arguably weirder,” because he knows it won’t sit well with her.) “It’s just that, there’s probably not going to be anyone I know at the funeral. None of my family lives close by, so I’m sort of, you know, representing them by showing up, and I don’t like funerals. I know we don’t know each other super well, or anything, but it would be nice to have a friend there.” He hopes his staring at the ground is perceived as bashfulness instead of guilt.

 

“I mean,” Scully says, obviously searching for some sort of excuse. “I’ve got an evening class I probably shouldn’t miss.”

 

“I’ll get you back in time for it,” Mulder says, and Scully laughs.

 

“I’ve heard that one before,” she says. Mulder grins.

 

“Yeah, okay, well, I’ll try to get you back in time for it. I’ll try really hard.”

 

Scully still doesn’t look convinced.

 

“I don’t like funerals either,” she admits, and Mulder shrugged.

 

“Then let’s go hate one together,” he says. “Please?” he adds. “It’d mean a lot.”

 

He watches Scully as she loses an internal battle. Finally she sighs, and shrugs. “Okay,” she said. “But you owe me.”

  
“Big time,” Mulder says, leading her once again to his car, off on another adventure with this endlessly confusing girl.


	6. Chapter 6

Scully doesn’t just dislike funerals—she loathes them. When she was seven, she had an aunt who died of a massive stroke. Her parents made her fit her tomboyish body into a dreary, black dress that used to be her sister Melissa’s. The funeral had been open casket. Her parents led her and her siblings past the still body of her aunt. Her aunt looked waxy, and overly made-up, with thick, blue eye shadow, and a chalky foundation covering her stiff, cold skin, even though all the makeup in the world couldn’t make a dead body look like anything but a dead body. For weeks afterward, Scully found herself waking in the middle of the night, flushed and shaking, from dreams about what it might feel like to touch that waxy skin.

 

Now, of course, she has another reason to loathe mourning the dead; she can’t think of people’s grief without thinking of her own family; without thinking of her mother weeping over Scully’s own, lifeless body, preserved with embalming fluid and coated in layers of makeup in a poor attempt to cover up the look of death. Her father would stand gruffly at his wife’s side, biting back tears in a manly struggle between masculine expectation, and fatherly grief.

 

Scully has heard stories of other terminal patients who have things called “living funerals,” as a way to allow family to say goodbye while they still can. To Scully, the idea is abhorrent. Scully’s gut is clenched at the idea of attending a total stranger’s funeral—she can’t even fathom what it would be like to attend her own.

 

They pull up to the church a quarter to one, and they filter inside with the rest of the crowd. It’s a big, looming, Catholic church, with a plethora of stained glass windows and gratuitous portraits and statues of Christ, bleeding from the palms and ankles, head full of thorns, bowing solemnly at all who visit. This does little to quiet the fluttering in Scully’s stomach. She was raised in the Catholic faith, and though the only real remnant of a childhood spent in CCD is the thin, golden cross she wears around her neck, she still can’t help the swell of guilt she gets inside these walls. She is suddenly aware of how long it’s been since her last confession (years); how long it’s been since she last attended mass (months); how long it’s been since she last doubted the existence of God (hours, probably). She regrets coming to the funeral upon arrival.

 

“Big funeral,” Scully says to Mulder, simply because not saying anything gives her too much time to think.

 

“Well, you know, Betsy was a popular girl,” Mulder says. Scully wonders why his ears go red.

 

It truly is a spectacular turnout. Sixty or seventy people, all dressed in blacks and greys, mope about the lobby of the church, in varying degrees of somberness. They slowly filter into the room for the service. A tall, balding man nods grimly at Mulder and Scully when they take the seats beside him. “Afternoon,” he says.

 

“Afternoon,” Mulder says for the both of them.

 

“Don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” the man says conversationally. “How’d you know Betsy?”

 

“Friend of the family,” Mulder says. “My parents are sorry they couldn’t come, but they told me to send their condolences.”

 

The man accepts this. “I’m her uncle,” he explains. “Uncle through marriage, though, so we were never that close. Sweet girl, though. Terrible disease. It’s what took my wife, you know.”

 

“Oh, so was her cancer genetic? I mean, I didn’t realize cancer ran in the family.”

 

“It doesn’t ‘sfar as I can tell. My wife’s pancreatic cancer seemed an isolated incident, ‘til Betsy, of course.”

 

“Was hers pancreatic?” Mulder asks, and then quickly adds. “My parents never said what type it was.”

 

“Oh no,” says the man. “It was brain cancer. Awful, awful disease…”

 

Scully says nothing—not one damn thing—but her jaw is set tight. Of course, she thinks, of all the things this woman could have died of, it had to be this. She feels a dull ache in her head that is probably psychosomatic, but that she attributes to her tumor anyway because that’s all she can really think about now. She tries to focus on making her facial expression neutral, because otherwise, her discomfort would be palpable.

 

She’s saved the burden of conversation by the start of the service. She bows her head when the priest calls for prayer, but doesn’t register any of the words, thinking instead that she should be ashamed of herself for again letting this boy drag her into something she has no business being a part of.

She shakes the thought from her head, trying to logic herself out of the bad feelings, telling herself she is just providing moral support to a friend, and there’s nothing wrong with that. She tunes back into the service, and learns about Betsy.

 

The descriptions of her are generic enough, with proclamations of Betsy’s strength and courage, but when the priest says, “it seems unfair for Betsy to have fallen ill, after having enough trials in life before her diagnosis,” it seems to resonate with the crowd, and Scully wonders what they know about Betsy that she doesn’t. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Mulder fiddle with something in his lap, and when she glances over, she sees he’s discreetly jotting something down on a small notebook. He catches her eye, immediately pushes the notebook away, and gives her a sheepish grin, which she responds to with a furrowed brow.

 

She doesn’t have time to question it. The priest leads them all in another prayer, and she’s distracted, because she recognizes this one.

 

The priest says, “May Christ who rose from the dead, our true God, moved by the intercession of His spotless mother and of all the Saints, place the soul of His departed servant in the tabernacles of the just; may He lay her to rest in the bosom of Abraham, numbering him among the just; and may He, who in both good and kind, have mercy upon us. Amen.”

 

“Amen,” Scully echoes with the crowd. She doesn’t know the prayer by heart, but she’s struck the familiarity of it. She remembers her own family’s priest reciting it over her Aunt’s casket, and amidst this flashback, Scully is thankful the Hagopian’s have opted not to put the body of young Betsy on display.

The service ends, and the room is full of awkward shuffling, and sporadic sniffling. Scully stands to filter back into the lobby with the rest, but Mulder hangs back. She stops and listens to him ask the man sitting beside them, “When the priest said that thing about Betsy having a lot of trials in life before she got cancer…what did he mean?”

 

The man looks a little surprised as he gets to his feet. “Don’t you know?” he asks. “Thought it was common knowledge.”

 

“My parents were the ones who really knew Betsy,” Mulder says, and Scully doesn’t miss the he goes a little red again. “I knew her more through association than in person. I’m just here representing them since they couldn’t make it.”

 

“Hm,” the man grunts. “Yeah, I guess I can understand why you wouldn’t know, then.”

 

“So what did the priest mean?” Mulder prompts.

 

“Well, this probably isn’t my business to be sharing, but since everyone and their dog knows about it, I guess it’s of no consequence. A few years back Betsy went missing.”

 

“Missing? Like, she was kidnapped?”

 

“Something like that, yeah. No one knows for sure what happened, to be honest. She was gone for weeks, and when she was found she was practically on death’s doorstep. Took ages for her to recover—she couldn’t remember a damn thing that had happened to her, poor thing. Doctors thought she must have repressed the memory because what happened had been so awful. Just when she thought everything was getting back to normal, she got the diagnosis. Inoperable brain cancer, on top of all that. Can you imagine?”

 

“Excuse me,” Scully mutters as politely as she can muster. She turns from Mulder and the man and hurries through the aisle in what she hopes doesn’t look too much like ‘storming off.’ She elbows through the crowd in the lobby, and powerwalks all the way to Mulder’s car. She leans against the door and catches her breath.

 

“Hey,” Mulder’s voice says from beside her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

 

Scully straightens herself out. “Nothing,” she says quickly.

 

“Something,” Mulder counters. “I dunno if you noticed, but you left in a pretty big hurry.”

 

“Yeah, well, I told you, I don’t like funerals,” she says aloud. “Especially when they directly mirror my own life somehow,” she adds in her head.

 

“Shit. Well, sorry if it made you uncomfortable,” Mulder says sincerely. “But thanks for coming with me. Would have been awkward to go alone.”

 

“Yeah, about that,” Scully says suddenly. “What was with the note taking in the middle of a funeral? Or the twenty questions with that guy?”

 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Mulder says naively, but Scully shakes her head.

 

“I dunno, Mulder, it was just a little weird. Especially when you were hammering that guy with questions about Betsy’s…” Scully trails off. A look of dawning comprehension comes over her face, and is quickly replaced by fury. “About her abduction,” she finishes knowingly. “Damnit, Mulder, you didn’t know that woman at all, did you?”

 

“Of course I did,” Mulder says. He bites his lip. “Or, well, not directly. It’s more complicated than that—” he starts to explain, but Scully cuts him off.

 

“No, I don’t think it is that much more complicated, Mulder. You dragged me from school, made me sit there during that uncomfortable service, all because you think that poor, dead woman was an alien abductee. Don’t you? That’s why, isn’t it?”

 

“I don’t know,” Mulder says honestly. “That’s why I had to come here. Because I don’t know.”

 

“But you thinks she might be,” Scully says angrily. “Jesus Christ, Mulder, it’s one thing to take me out into the woods looking for UFOs, but you brought me here under false pretenses, deliberately.”

 

“I didn’t think you’d come with me if I told you the truth.”

 

“Well, we’ll never know will we?” She shakes her head, glaring at some point behind Mulder that he can’t see. “I don’t want to think that everyone else is right about you,” she says finally. Mulder sucks in some air.

 

“I don’t want you to think that either,” he says. “And I’m sorry I lied to you.”

 

Scully opens her mouth to speak, but before she can say anything, her nose starts to bleed. She puts a hand to her face. “Damnit,” she hisses, tilting her head back.

 

“Oh shit, here,” Mulder says, opening his car and digging through the heaps of trash in the backseat. “I have some clean napkins, take them,” he says, handing them to her. Scully takes them with a scowl, pinching her nose.

 

Mulder awkwardly stands beside her while she stops the bleeding. “Are you okay?” he asks her when she wipes away the last of it.

 

“I told you, I get nosebleeds a lot,” she says shortly. “Can we leave now?” she asks. Mulder winces.

 

“I really am sorry,” he says.

 

“Save it,” Scully says.

 

“No, wait, I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

 

Scully crosses up her arms. “Is there an explanation besides you invading a stranger’s fucking funeral looking for evidence of extraterrestrials?”

 

“Yes,” Mulder says, digging in his coat pocket. From it he produces a crumpled piece of newspaper, and hands it to Scully.

 

“This is Betsy Hagopian’s obituary,” she says.

 

“Yeah. Someone slipped it under my door.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“Dunno.” Mulder mirrors Scully’s crossed arms and leans against his car. “Something I failed to really explain to you the last time we, uh, interacted, was how my connections within the US government work.”

Scully lets out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Connects in the US government,” she repeats, shaking her head. “Well tell me, then, how do these connections work?”

 

“Informants anonymously provide information,” Mulder says. “Access to documents and knowledge that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Look, you know what I told you about my sister before?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I think that whatever happened to her, the government not only knew about it, I think they were directly involved.”

 

Scully shakes her head. “Let me get this straight. You think your sister was abducted by aliens, and somehow, the government orchestrated it? Like some big, extraterrestrial conspiracy?”

 

“I don’t know what it is,” Mulder says. “I just know that the deeper I look into this stuff, the bigger the connections get. My dad worked for the government, I told you that. A lot of my sources are people who worked with or for him. I know it sounds crazy, Scully, but this obituary was slipped under my door for some reason. Something about Betsy Hagopian’s death doesn’t make sense, and someone wants me to find out what.”

 

“You’re the most paranoid person I’ve ever met,” Scully says, barely audibly. Mulder smiles grimly.

 

“You should meet some of the people I know. Some of them make me seem like the most trustworthy guy in the world.”

 

“I’m still pissed at you,” Scully says. “You’re not off the hook. This was a fucking low blow.”

 

“I know, I know. Believe me, the only reason I did it was because I really wanted your company, and I thought you’d think I was, I don’t know, a freak or something if I told you the truth.”

 

“We just crashed a fucking funeral,” Scully says.

 

“We crashed a fucking funeral and got away with it,” Mulder adds, daring to grin. After a moment, Scully grins back.

 

“Well, what are you going to do now?” she asks. “About Betsy I mean?”

 

“I know some people who can, well, uh…” Mulder trails off.

 

“That can what?” Scully asks, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Hack into her personal records?” Mulder says sheepishly. Scully scoffs loudly.

 

“My God Mulder, is any of this even remotely legal?”

 

“Anything for the Truth, right?”

 

There’s an awkward silence between them. Mulder shrugs his shoulders while Scully shakes her head disapprovingly at her shoes. Her cheeks start to go numb in the cold, and Mulder’s nose is red. “Do you, uh, want me to drive you back to campus before I go and see these guys? I can get you back in time for class.”

 

Scully glares out into space again, telling herself, over and over, “get away, say yes, go home, now!” 

 

She isn’t seeing red quite as badly as before, but she’s still boiling a little with being put through this all for a lie. Still, she’s never known someone—especially a peer—with information sources in the government. Her logical side is furious and fed up, but the part of her that knows she’s dying and has nothing to lose is nothing short of exhilarated.

  
“Fucking Hell,” she says, mostly to herself, opening the passenger side door. “If I end up in jail tonight, I’m kicking your ass. Now drive.”


	7. Chapter 7

In retrospect, taking Scully to the funeral under false pretenses may have been a tactical error, and Mulder feels bad about it—he really does—but it’s hard to be too guilty now that he once again has Dana Scully riding passenger side to his next piece of this puzzle.

 

She keeps scoffing and shaking her head, as though she can’t believe she’s in this position again. Mulder can’t believe it either, to be honest, given how red she’d gotten when she realized the truth about Betsy. The crimson in her cheeks mixed with the deep red of her hair gave off the illusion that her whole head was on fire, and Mulder wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if steam began rising from her ears.

Her face is back to normal color, though, and despite the head shaking and the scoffing, Mulder can see a suppressed smile hiding in the corners of her lips whenever he takes his eyes off the road to glance her way—which is more often than he’d like to admit.

 

“We never did get lunch,” Mulder says into the silence of the car. “You want to stop and get something? I’m buying.”

 

Scully gives a noncommittal shrug, but at the mention of food her stomach makes an audible growl, and she blushes as Mulder laughs.

 

“I could eat,” she says.

 

“There’s a local diner up the road a few miles. That work?”

 

“Why do you know where a local diner is in small town Pennsylvania?”

 

“I, uh, spend a lot of time around here. Well, I say ‘here,’ I really mean pretty much everywhere on the outskirts of DC.”

 

“Why?” Scully asks. Then, “Oh no, let me guess? Chasing little green men?”

 

“No,” Mulder says sincerely. “At least, not always. I like to investigate anything strange or unusual, not just UFOs. Sometimes I get tips about stuff from, you know, my informants.” Mulder is painfully aware that he sounds like an absurd sort of secret agent, but lying to Scully didn’t go over well last time, so he’s going the ‘brutally honest’ route. “Sometimes I just hear about stuff myself. I’ve got, uh, a bit of a reputation, not just at school, but in the community, so people seek me out every now and again.”

 

“What do people expect an undergrad college kid to do for them?” asks Scully, and Mulder smiles at the fact that her question is about logistics instead of about what exactly ‘strange’ and ‘unusual’ going ons could be happening here in the East.

 

“You’d be surprised who people will talk to when no one else will listen,” says Mulder, and Scully has no rebuttal.

 

They pull into the diner parking lot and go inside. It’s the middle of the afternoon—after the lunch rush, but too early for dinner—so the place is nearly deserted. There are two elderly men in deep discussion over cups of coffee and pie, and there’s a middle-aged woman leafing through a magazine while picking at a plate of onion rings, back in the corner table. The waitress is a young, thin lady, with a bobbed haircut that is dyed pink, and is coming in brown at the roots. She has a stained apron around her waist, and she smiles when she sees Mulder.

 

“Fox Mulder, as I live and breathe,” she says cheerfully. “I haven’t seen you for a minute. The Hell you been up to?”

 

“School, mostly,” Mulder says, smiling back. “Yourself?”

 

The waitress gestures at her apron. “Work, work, work, as always,” she says. She looks at Scully. “This your girl?”

 

“Uh, just a friend of mine,” Mulder says hastily as Scully raises an eyebrow. “Scully, this is Maddy. Maddy, this is Dana Scully.”

 

“Hello,” Scully says politely, but not with much enthusiasm.

 

“’Lo,” says Maddy. “Here, let me take you two to a booth. What brings you to these parts, Mulder? You haven’t been by since that poltergeist thing last February.” Maddy leads them to a booth near a window and set down a couple of menus and some silverware rolled up in paper napkins. “It aint back is it?” she asks.

 

“Not as far as I know,” Mulder says, perfectly aware of Scully’s quirked eyebrow without even looking at her. “We were actually just visiting some people we knew just a town over,” he lies, picking up a menu and flipping through it, even though he knows he’ll get the same thing he always does.

 

“Thank God,” says Maddy. “That was bad for business, that was. Everyone was scared to bits—wouldn’t come near the diner, even though we were miles away from that damn house.” She turns to Scully. “He ever tell you about that?”

 

“Um,” Scully says, glancing at Mulder. “No, I don’t believe he has.”

 

“It was the damndest thing, I’ll tell you,” Maddy says, eyes lighting up like she was hoping she’d get to tell the story. “It was at the old Roger’s house down on Wilburn Street. Nobody had lived in it for upwards of about fifteen years—it was a local legend that the place was haunted, you know? But about a year ago, this nice, young Protestant couple, they moved in. They were newlyweds, and the house was so damn cheap cause no one would buy it, and they weren’t locals so they didn’t know what people had to say about the place. They just thought it was an absolute steal.”

 

“Let me guess,” Scully says dryly. “They both died? Double murder? Murder suicide?”

 

“No,” says Maddy with an edge to her voice. “That sweet girl—Allison was her name—she was the only one of them who died. See, the police had gotten a bunch of calls to the house after they moved in. I know, because the officers come here for brunch every Sunday, and they would talk about how they got called down to that house again, because Allison thought she heard trespassers, or could have sworn someone was breaking glass, or moving her furniture, or stuff like that. The police thought either Allison was a little off her rocker, or some kids were just having a go at her because of the rumors, because her husband never said nothing about it.

 

“But then one day, her husband, Brent I think it was, he called the police, saying something about trespassers, and that got their attention, because it had always been Allison doing the calling. So when they got there, they went up and rang the doorbell, and there was no answer, but they could hear someone talking inside, so they opened the door—and this is word for word what they told me when they came by the diner afterward—they found Allison’s body hanging from the wall like someone nailed her up there like a damn painting, ‘cept there was nothing to keep her there. She was just plastered against the wall like her back was made of glue, and she had this big gaping wound in her belly, and her blood was just…everywhere. And Brent was there, sitting in the middle of the floor, holding his knees, just rocking back and forth, talking to himself, like he’d seen some sort of ghost and it knocked all the sense out of him.

 

“They put Brent away in a hospital down in Philly. You know, one of those hospitals for people who go a little nutty? Then they marked down the old Roger’s house to be condemned and bulldozed, but a couple of local folks were afraid what would happen to whatever it was that had done that to Alison if they tore down where it lived, so some people got a hold of Mulder here—heard he had helped out with a similar case before and might know what’s up—and he came down and brought your friend—what’d you say she was again?”

 

“An exorcist,” Mulder says, grinning at Scully who looks like she’s sucking on a particularly strong lemon.

 

“Right, an exorcist, like that movie. So he brought this exorcist lady, and she did this sort of ritual in the house, and made sure it was all clear before they came and tore it down. It’s a Payless Shoes now,” Maddy adds. Scully clears her throat.

 

“Sounds like Mulder got here just in time,” she says, and Mulder doesn’t think Maddy catches the sarcasm in her voice.

 

“Oh definitely,” Maddy says seriously. “Anyways, I’ll go get you some waters—give you a chance to look over the menus.”

 

“Nice girl,” Scully says as Maddy leaves the table.

 

“Oh shut up,” Mulder says with a grin.

 

“’An exorcist, like that movie,’” Scully says, echoing Maddy. “She’s right. That whole story sounds like a movie.”

 

“Hey, I know you think it’s ridiculous,” Mulder says, holding up a hand. “But I got to see the police report—don’t ask—everything Maddy said was in there. No one could tell how Alison died. It’s like she was mauled to death by something that left absolutely no trace marks at all. They wanted to pin it on the husband, but they had nothing but circumstantial evidence to link him to the crime.”

 

“What I just don’t understand,” Scully says. “Is how you seem to get drawn into all these obscure, small town mysteries. Between the ghost hunting and the UFO spotting—it’s like you’re this celebrity for fighting local legends.”

 

“It’s like I told you, Scully, most people have the same reaction you’re having right now. The fact that I’m willing to listen gives people enough reason to talk to me.”

 

As if on cue, at the table over where the elderly men are sitting, one of them grunts at them, “Did I hear Ms. Maddy right? Are you the kid who got rid of that poltergeist in the old Roger’s house?”

 

“Well, I didn’t get rid of it myself,” Mulder says to him. “But I’m the one who brought the exorcist in, yeah.”

 

“You like that kind of stuff then? Weird, unexplained things?”

 

“I’ve been known to dabble in it,” Mulder says. “Why?”

 

The man glances at his friend, who gives a small shrug, and the man turns his chair so he can see Mulder and Scully a little easier. “My buddy and I, we do a lot of fishing as a hobby. We actually just got back from this trip, you see. We went boating out on Lake Erie. You know much about Lake Erie, kid?”

 

“I mean, it’s one of the Great Lakes—” Mulder starts, but the man waves his hand dismissively.

 

“No, no, no, I mean, do you know about the Lake Erie legends?”

 

“Can’t say I do,” says Mulder, leaning a little bit further in his chair. Maddy is back carrying two glasses of water, and she’s hovering over their table listening to the man talk. Scully sits back in her chair and crosses up her arms.

 

“Goes back centuries,” says the man. “They call it Bessie—like that sea monster, Nessie, ‘cept it lives in the lake. No one knows exactly what it looks like, of course—”

 

“Of course,” Scully mutters, but only Mulder hears her.

 

“—but there’s a lot of theories. You know, 30 to 40 feet, like a serpent, but with like, legs and stuff—“ Mulder pointedly ignores Scully’s eye roll. “Glowing eyes, that sort of thing.”

 

“So what about it?” Mulder says. “Do you think it’s up there? What do you think it looks like?”

 

“Oh, I don’t need to guess,” says the man. “I’ve seen it. We both have.” He gestures to his friend. “We were out before sunrise one morning, and it passed right under us.”

 

“Nearly knocked our boat over,” his friend adds, an excited gleam in his eye.

 

“At first we thought it was just an overgrown catfish.”

 

“But no catfish is that size.”

 

“Plus we saw these webbed, I dunno, arm like things through the water.”

 

“Scariest thing I’d ever seen.”

 

“Think we’re lucky we got out with our lives.”

 

“Can’t think of what would have happened if our boat had overturned, I’ll tell you that.”

 

“Golly,” says Maddy under her breath.

 

“Huh,” Mulder says.

 

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Scully says, but again only Mulder hears her.

 

“What do you think of that, kid?” the man says smugly, like he just presented the best story in the world. Mulder doesn’t tell him that he’s dealt with bigger, but that’s not to say he’s not intrigued.

 

“Definitely sounds like something up my alley,” he tells the man. “Any way you could tell me where you were when you saw it? Should I ever find myself that way?”

 

The man looks thoughtful, and then grabs a napkin and a pen from his shirt pocket. “If you’re really interested,” he says, jotting something down. “My buddy and I are going back out there a week from Friday. Just for a weekend trip, mind you. We’d let you tag along.” He hands the napkin to Mulder. It’s an address. “Meet us there by 7 am, if you decide you want to see it for yourself. The names Earl, and this is Benny.”

 

“I’ll think about it,” Mulder says, pocketing the napkin, knowing full well he doesn’t need to think about it—he’ll definitely be meeting them there. He wonders if there’s anyway on God’s green Earth that he’d be able to convince Scully to come along.

 

“What did I tell you?” he asks her after Earl and Benny turn away, and Maddy’s left to get their lunch. “People will talk to you, if you’re just willing to listen.”

 

***

 

By the time they get back to town and reach the Lone Gunmen’s house the sun has already begun to set. Mulder spent the better part of car ride listening to Scully rant about how everything they heard in that diner could be likened to some B movie horror story plot, which Mulder just shrugged at, much to her annoyance.

 

“Who are these people, again?” Scully asks, finally taking her attention off of ghosts and sea monsters as Mulder parks the car.

 

“Friends of mine. Remind me to tell you how we met some other time, it’s uh, quite the story.” Mulder clears his throat. “But yeah, they’re basically grade A computer hackers, and genuine conspiracy theorists. They run a zine.”

 

“Right,” Scully says, following Mulder to the door. Mulder rings the doorbell. He hears movement inside, and listens as someone unlocks about ten different locks. “Trustworthy bunch, huh?” Scully asks quietly, and Mulder just smiles.

 

“Ayy, Mulder!” Frohike says, opening the door and ushering the two of them in. “Hey guys, Mulder’s here! Oh, and hello, who’s this lovely lady?” Frokhike gives Scully a once over, and winks at her.

 

“Uh,” Scully says.

 

“This is Dana Scully,” Mulder says. “Friend of mine. Hey,” he adds as Langly and Byers come in to greet him.

 

“Hey Mulder,” Langly says. “You gonna be here long? We’re running a D&D campaign with a couple of hackers who work inside the Pentagon. You in?”

 

“Would love to, but I’m here on business, I’m afraid,” Mulder says.

 

“What’s up?” Byers asks.

 

“I need you guys to pull up as much as you can on a woman named Betsy Hagopian.”

 

“Betsy Hagopian?” Langly says, pulling up a chair at the nearest computer and typing something.

 

“Some chick-a-dee you’re trying to get with, Mulder?” Frohike asks.

 

“Yes, because I make a habit of breaking into the personal files of all of my dates.”

 

“Certainly would save time if they’re involved in anything illegal,” Byers says helpfully.

 

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Frohike says to Scully. “Mulder’s alright. He only does background checks on girls who deserve it.”

 

“I am greatly reassured,” Scully says dryly.

 

“I pulled up Betsy Hagopian’s obituary,” says Langly. “Did you know this chick was dead?”

 

“We just came from her funeral, actually, yeah.”

 

“What are you trying to find out about her, Mulder?” asks Byers.

 

“Anything, to be honest. Someone tipped me off about her, but other than the fact that she died of brain cancer and is a possible abductee, I got nothing.”

 

“I’m not seeing a lot here,” Langly says. “Except…” he trails off.

 

“What is it?” Mulder asks.

 

“A government file,” Langly says. “It’s got Betsy Hagopian’s name in it, but it’s restricted access. Maybe if I…” Langly types something into the computer, and a big ‘ACCESS DENIED” screen pops up on the screen. “I can’t get past this firewall,” he says. “Whatever file she’s in, somebody is making sure no one can get in.”

 

“Why would Betsy Hagopian’s name be in a government protected file?” Scully asks.

 

“That the million dollar question, isn’t it,” Mulder says, peering over Langly’s shoulder, as though hoping to catch some glimpse of information through the blocked screen.

 

“You said she was a possible abductee?” Frohike asks.

 

“Maybe,” says Mulder. “Apparently some time back she went missing for several weeks, and she came back her memory was wiped. No one knows where she was, or who took her, or anything.”

 

“Does that abduction have something to do with that file?” Scully asks, and Mulder looks up at her, surprised.

 

“Do you think that’s possible?” he asks her.

 

“Well, I’m not saying it makes a lot of sense for the government to kidnap a young woman with no obvious cause, but it makes more sense than a couple of aliens picking her out of her bed one night.” She looks thoughtful. “Do we know her job? What she was involved in? Did she do anything for the government?”

 

“Uhm,” Langly says, typing some more things into the computer. “Says here she sold cosmetics for Mary Kay. Doesn’t sound like something the government would want to keep under their strongest firewall.”

 

“Then I suppose it would logically follow that the government knows something about Betsy Hagopian that we don’t,” says Scully.

 

“But what?” Byers asks.

 

“Or why?” Mulder mutters.

 

“I think,” Scully says, looking to Mulder. “It requires a little more digging.”

  
Mulder can’t help the grin that stretches across his face. “I’m in if you’re in, Ms. Pre-Med.”


	8. Chapter 8

Dana Scully is in his bedroom.

 

After they got home Thursday night, Mulder had the sense of mind to finally ask her for her phone number. Phone calls and text messages, he figured, were a more socially acceptable way to interact with someone than chasing UFOs and crashing funerals. (He preferred the latter, but that was neither here nor there.)

 

Mulder spent all of Friday with his phone never a few inches out of his reach. During class, he kept one hand holding it inside his jacket pocket, and when he got in bed to sleep that night, he laid it next to his head on his pillow, staring at it like a lovesick teenager, waiting for their crush to call. He didn’t even have the sense to be embarrassed about it. Dana Scully  _ and _ a government conspiracy all wrapped up in one? It was too good to be true. And sure, if push came to shove, he would make the first move, because he wasn’t losing out on this. But there was a desperate part of him that was dying to know if Scully cared enough to call him first.

 

It wasn’t until early Saturday afternoon that his phone lit up, vibrating loudly on his desk, and it barely got two rings in before he had it up to his ear.

 

“Mulder?” came her voice. “It’s me.”  _ It’s me _ ; as though they’d reached a familiarity with each other; a solid comfort level. “What are you doing right now?”

 

When he told her he was doing what he almost always was doing when there were no monsters to chase—fuck all—she said, “would you mind if I came up to your dorm to study for my physics test? My roommate has people over, and Tom Colton has discovered the corner in the library I use to hide from him in. I swear to God, if I hear one more ‘do the carpets match the drapes’ joke...” 

 

“I’m surprised Tom Colton even knows where the library is,” Mulder had said, and this had made her laugh—a real laugh, not just the disbelieving chuckle she made whenever he said something ridiculous—and the sound was like Christmas. 

 

And that’s how she ended up here, in Mulder’s bedroom. She’s at his desk, papers spread out before her on the space he made for her by pushing back his piles of junk off to the side into a bigger pile of junk. Her boots are beside her on the floor, and she’s sitting with her socked feet tucked under her while she chews absent mindedly on the end of her pen. 

 

Mulder, sitting on his bed, under the pretense of studying as well, glances up at her from time to time. 

 

Everything about this is so unprecedented that he thinks a flying saucer could land right outside his window and he still would be more surprised that he has this incredible woman shuffling through her notes at his desk. She scribbles something down in the margin of a sheet of notebook paper, and pushes a strand of hair back behind her ear, and Mulder wonders if it’s possible to love her already. 

 

Not romantically, he clarifies to himself, because that would definitely be crossing a line, but as a friend. Friendship is one thing—and he’s starting to believe that this might be what this is; an honest-to-god friendship—but if he started thinking about her as anything more than that? She’d be running for the hills in an instant, he’s sure.

 

_ But what if she didn’t _ ? he finds himself thinking.  _ What then _ ? 

 

It’s a dangerous line of thought, but he entertains it for just a minute while Scully moves her lips silently, mouthing out numbers, trying to sort out a sum in her head. She isn’t wearing lipstick. She’s forgone the whole makeup routine today, it seems, and yet she doesn’t look any less stunning, which is equal parts wonderful and infuriating. There are ghosts of shadows under her eyes, and she has a mole above her lip he’d never noticed before. When she’s thinking, a crease forms between her scrunched up eyebrows. Mulder, for just a moment, wonders what it would be like to kiss it away; to slide his fingers down the smooth skin of her cheek. He thinks, just ever so briefly, about what she might taste like.

 

He stops the thought right in it’s tracks. Clearly he’s spent far too much time alone with nothing but his right hand and internet porn. Scully may be beautiful, but she’s also so much more than that, and he refuses to be another Tom Colton in her life. She deserves someone who wants her as a friend and not just as a lay, and he would take a vow of celibacy right this minute if it means she’ll stay in his life. 

 

“How’s it going?” he asks, the silence giving his mind too much time to wander. She looks up at him, blinking, as though she had been so engrossed in her work she had forgotten where she was. 

 

“Just trying to calculate the binding energy per nucleon of radioactive uranium,” she says easily, like that’s what everyone is doing these days.

 

“I’m sorry,” says Mulder.

 

“Oh don’t be, it’s fun,” says Scully earnestly, and Mulder can see she means it. Not in an arrogant way, like ‘ _ I know how to do this and  _ you _ don’t _ ,’ but in a way that suggests she actually finds joy in spending her Saturday afternoon slaving over science homework, finding excitement in the challenge of it. She turns so she can face him more fully. “I love physics,” she says, and he doesn’t doubt it. 

 

It’s not that he doesn’t like science, too, but he understands it the way a criminal understands the law, or how a creative writer understands the elements of style—you can’t break the rules without first knowing them. 

 

“Think you can tear yourself away from it long enough to take a break with me? I’m losing focus,” he says, as if he had any to begin with. 

 

Scully purses her lips. “What’d you have in mind?”

 

“Dunno,” says Mulder. “Walk around the quad?”

 

“Too cold.”

 

“Coffee in the student union then?”

 

“Much better,” says Scully. She gets to her feet and raises her hands high above her head in an elongated stretch, and as her arms raise, so does her shirt, and Mulder notices that she has a tattoo on her lower back. It’s too quick for him to see what it is, and the same way he needs to know about what lurks in outer space, or what monsters hide in the shadows, he’s overcome with a need to see it in detail. Somewhere along the way, Dana Scully has become one of his objects of obsession—a mystery he needs to unravel. He wants to know the Truth of her from the inside out. 

 

It’s very possible he’s playing with fire here, and he doesn’t want her to see him as an arsonist.

 

“You coming?” she asks, slipping her feet into her boots, and he has no choice but to climb down off his bed and start piling on his winter clothes. 

 

Outside it’s misting, freezing the second it hits the ground, creating a thin layer of ice all across the campus. It’s the kind of ice that looks dry until you take a step and find yourself flat on your ass. Mulder bites back a laugh at the way Scully waddles like a penguin, her feet level with her shoulders and knees slightly bent.

 

“Shut up,” she says. He hasn’t said anything, and she’s not even looking, instead staring at the ground. “This is the most effective way to walk on ice.” Just as she says that, she slips a little and grabs hard onto Mulder's elbow. 

 

“Right,” he says, and her glare is worth a thousand words. 

 

“These boots have no damn tread,” she says. “We’re walking the rest of the way like this. If I go down, I’m taking you with me.” 

 

Mulder is too taken with her willingness to engage him in physical contact publically, that he doesn’t even have anything smart to quip back at her. They trudge from his dorm, walking like penguins, with her clinging to his arm like a lifeline.

 

Once inside the student union she lets go and wipes her wet shoes on the rubber floor mat by the door. He misses her contact, is immediately embarrassed by that fact, and busies himself by untying his scarf. 

 

The student union is largely empty, except for a few loyal students at cheap, wobbly desks, bent over strewn about papers and open laptops, cramming as the end of the semester approaches. Up a half step of stairs there’s a small bar in a back corner that serves free trade coffee and muffins from the local co-op. The baristas are usually art students with multicolored hair and thrift shop sweaters and homemade beanies. 

 

“What's your drink?” Mulder asks. “I'm buying.”

 

“Just a black coffee,” says Scully. 

 

Mulder goes up to the barista. She’s got her blue hair pulled over her shoulder in a French braid underneath a crocheted hat. “We’re together,” he says to her, partially because he gets a pathetic thrill out of having someone to buy coffee for. “For the lady, can I get a black coffee?”

 

“Size?” asks the barista in a bored voice. Mulder glances over at Scully, who shrugs.

 

“You’re paying, you decide,” she says.

 

“How much homework do you have left?” he asks.

 

“About six more physics problems and a biochemistry lab report.”

 

Mulder turns back to the barista. “Large,” he says. 

 

The barista types a few buttons on the cash register. “Anything else?”

 

Mulder, impulsive, notices the sign on the bar advertising their seasonal holiday drink. It’s some excessive coffee drink—peppermint latte, covered in obscene amounts of green-colored whipped topping and candy cane bits. He points to the sign. “That thing,” he says. “Large, and add a shot of espresso.” 

 

After Scully makes the mistake of complimenting the barista’s hat, and them enduring several minutes of her explaining how she made the yarn herself out of alpaca wool, and how it’s really hard to find because the nearby craft store only restocks their supply once a year, Mulder and Scully get their drinks and find a table. 

 

Scully adds a single packet of powdered non-dairy creamer to her coffee, and no sugar. Mulder commits this to memory. 

 

“That thing probably has a day’s worth of calories in the whipped topping alone,” she says, nodding at his own drink, as if she has any need to worry about her weight.

 

“Wanna try it?” Mulder asks, holding his cup out to her. 

 

“Yes I do,” she says without hesitation, and takes a sip. She very briefly closes her eyes and licks her lips, handing it back, saying, “not bad.” Mulder suppresses a grin. ‘Sweet tooth,’ is added to his mental file labeled  _ Dana Scully _ . 

 

“You think anymore about why Betsy’s name was in that file?” he asks casually, expecting an eyeroll, but instead he’s surprised when Scully bangs her hand down on the table, nearly causing their drinks to tip over.

 

“Shit,” she exclaims. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.” 

 

Mulder, taken aback, stares at her with wide eyes. “Forgot to tell me about what?” he asks. 

 

“It might be nothing,” she says, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her phone. She searches for something on it while adding, “I was gonna tell you last night, but it was like, three am, and I didn’t want to wake you—” Mulder doesn’t mention that he would have gladly taken that call. “—and this morning I was distracted with Colton and all the people my roommate had over that I just...here it is,” she cuts herself off, handing her phone over to Mulder. As he takes it, she grabs his drink and takes another sip of it, seemingly absent-mindedly, and Mulder decides not to comment on it.

 

On her phone she has pulled up Betsy Hagopian’s Facebook page. It’s full of wall posts from friends and families, offering their condolences, and spouting memories and comments about what a loving soul Betsy was. 

 

‘ _ we haven’t spoken since high school but i always regretted not talking to u more! _ ’

 

‘ _ god has gained an angel 2day _ ’

 

‘ _ finally betsy is at rest and with HIM and her family can be happy that she is no longer in pain _ ’

 

Mulder finds it all to be a gratuitous example of the human tendency to make everything about themselves, but he holds his tongue. He looks up at Scully, waiting for further explanation.

 

“I couldn’t sleep last night, and I was curious so I went Facebook stalking,” she says, scooting her chair over so she can peer over Mulder’s shoulder. “Her profile was really easy to find, and it’s mostly all public. Her last posts were pretty run-of-the-mill.” She takes another sip of Mulder’s drink. “And of course there’s all this bullshit, with everyone who ever shared airspace with Betsy acting like her death was a personal tragedy,” she says, gesturing at the posts all over Betsy’s wall. Mulder grins, happy to know she feels the same way he does about post-mortem social media drivel. “But that’s not what I wanted to show you. Here, look.” 

 

She reaches over his arm to scroll down on her phone, her upper body pressed against him. He is decidedly  _ not _ distracted by this. “Read this one,” she says, once she’s gotten to the post she wanted, sitting back in her chair and picking up Mulder’s drink in her hand and sipping on it. She doesn’t even put it back down. 

 

The post reads:

 

‘ _ So sad to lose another to such a terrible disease, and so soon after Helena’s passing. Sometimes life seems so unbearably fair, filled with the worst kind of coincidences. Prayers go out to the Hagopian family, and to Penny Northern. Here’s hoping you can find that strength that Betsy so unfortunately wasn’t able to get. _ ’ 

 

Mulder reads it over several times. “‘Lose another,’” he echoes. “‘Worst kind of coincidences.’ Odd.” Mulder believes in many things, but he is hard pressed to believe in coincidences. In his experience, coincidences are just things people have written off as being too hard to explain. A small thrill shoots through him.

 

“I know,” Scully says. “And there’s more.” She leans over again to tap on the hyperlink to Penny Northern’s page. Mulder notices that she’s mutual friends with both Betsy and whoever that Helena person was. 

 

The page itself is much more empty, with hardly any posts or pictures. But at the top of the page there’s a message from someone named Claire Northern. Her mother, possibly, or more likely a sister. It says:

 

‘ _ Sorry for the radio silence! For those asking for an update, the doctors are saying that the prognosis isn’t looking great. We are all, of course, choosing to remain optimistic. Penny’s deciding to remain positive, so we are too! Anyone wanting to come by and see her, we’ve been moved up to the hospice ward at Saint Elizabeth’s hospital, room 402. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers! -Claire _ ’

 

“What do you think?” Scully asks, both of her hands wrapped around his coffee cup, holding it just below her chin. “Do you think there’s a connection?”

 

“Seems pretty weird, don’t you think? For three women who seem to have known each other to all be dying in the same space of time?”

 

“And that comment on Betsy’s page made it sound like it was all from cancer.” 

 

Mulder nods his agreement. “I wonder if Helena and this Penny person both have similar abduction experiences,” he says. At Scully’s face, he amends, by saying, “I don’t necessarily mean alien abductions. Just...I wonder how much of the story they share.”

 

“Well...” says Scully slowly, chewing on the bottom of her lip, avoiding his eye. She doesn’t continue.

 

“Well what?” asks Mulder. After a moment she looks up at him, something glimmering in her expression.

 

“I’m not condoning this,” she says. “Just so you know, I think it’s a huge violation of privacy, and wrong on so many different moral grounds. But…”

 

“But?” Mulder prompts.

 

“But...looking at this logically, we have one witness left, at least that we know about. It makes sense to follow that trail, and see where it takes us.”

 

The smile that blooms across Mulder’s face happens without his consent, but he doesn’t care.

 

“You want to interrogate Penny Northern?” he asks.

 

“I never said I wanted to, but—”

 

“But you think we should.” 

 

Scully shoots daggers at him, and shrugs. “I think that if we want to find out why Betsy Hagopian’s name is in that locked file, we need to explore all possible avenues. I also think that it might be prudent,” she adds carefully. “To have those friends of yours see what comes up when they try and find Penny Northern’s name online.” 

 

Mulder wants to throw a party. His mental file folder on Scully just exploded into a million pieces and he has to start from scratch. He’s just about to confirm with her that, ‘you know I’m not doing this without you, right?’ when a voice hollers out from beside them.

 

“Dana Scully?” it says. “Is that you sitting there with Spooky?” 

 

Mulder and Scully both look up and see a boy in a pullover sweater and basketball shorts, despite the weather outside. Mulder doesn’t recognize him, but Scully stiffens next to him and purses her lips. 

 

“Peyton,” she says coolly. She turns to Mulder. “Fox, this is Peyton Ritter. He and I were lab partners in anatomy last year.” She does not say this with any amount of fondness. “He’s also Tom Colton’s old roommate. You remember Tom, don’t you?”

 

“Ah, yeah, I think we’ve met once or twice,” says Mulder, glancing up at Peyton, who is eyeing him like he’s a glob of mucus in a chair. 

 

“Peyton,” says Scully with faux cheeriness. “Since you seem to not know his name,” she says this part pointedly, “this is Fox Mulder.” 

 

“I know who he is,” says Peyton with a grimy smile. “Let’s just say that his reputation precedes him. Tell me, Spooky, kill any sorority recruits this year? Or, wait, that was Satan or something, wasn’t it? My mistake.” 

 

Scully opens her mouth to say something, but Mulder cuts her off. “Actually, it was witchcraft, but I understand why you’re confused. Witchcraft is often misconstrued as Satanism, when in fact there are several key differences between them, and while they share some fundamental aspects, the core beliefs vary. Although, regardless of how you define what happened to Patricia Borman, it should be clear that  _ I _ didn’t do it. I merely tried to bring her killer to justice.” 

 

He doesn’t look at Scully when he says any of this. He knows how he sounds, and to people like Peyton, he couldn’t care less, but his friendship with Scully still feels tenuous.

 

Instead of addressing him, Peyton turns to Scully and says, “why are you hanging out with such a freak?” 

 

“He’s a helluva lot better company than you ever were,” she says without a single beat of hesitation, and Mulder wonders if he heard her correctly. She turns to him and says, “don’t pay attention to Peyton, Mulder, he’s just bitter that after a whole semester of sexual harassment, I  _ still _ wouldn’t sleep with him.”

 

“Why would I want to sleep with a bitch like you?” asks Peyton, and Mulder sees red behind his eyes, but Scully just laughs.

 

“Remind me,” she says to Mulder, “to show you the screencaps I took of all the texts he sent me over the course of last semester.”

 

“Whatever, Dana. Colton was always saying you were a cocktease. Besides if this is the company you keep, there’s not a guy on this campus who will want to get with you, no matter how hot you are.”

 

Scully sits down Mulder’s coffee cup, leans forward so that she can meet Peyton’s eyes properly, and says, very seriously, “ _ good _ .” 

 

Peyton mumbles something obscene, bumping into the table on purpose as he walks away, and Scully sits back with a self-satisfied smile. Mulder says nothing, his face contorted into something resembling awe. “Hey, don’t let douchebags like Ritter bother you,” says Scully, misreading his facial expression.

 

“No that’s not…” he tries to explain it, but he doesn’t have the words. “I don’t care what Peyton Ritter thinks of me,” he says. He does not add, ‘ _ I only care about what  _ you _ think of me. _ ’

 

“Good. Seriously, his whole group of friends are a bunch of pigs who look at women like meat. You’re one of the first guys I’ve met on this whole campus who’s actually decent, and you’re definitely my first real friend, so don’t pay them any mind.”

 

“Oh,” is all Mulder says, the words ringing in his ears like a weird and impossible kind of tinnitus. 

 

“So, if we’re going to do this Penny Northern thing, we should probably come up with a plan beforehand. No offense, but your funeral crashing wasn’t the most eloquent of executions.” He hardly hears a word she says, as she takes back her phone and starts to type in directions to Saint Elizabeth’s hospital. “By the way,” she adds. “I accidentally drank all your coffee.”

 

—-

 

She has officially lost it, she’s sure of it.

 

When the doctor calls her back with the results of her scans, they’re going to say “sorry, Dana, but the cancer has spread over every inch of your brain,” and she’s not going to be the least bit surprised, because here she is, again, in the passenger side of Mulder’s beat-up Chevy, off on another ludicrous adventure, which, this time,  _ she _ suggested. 

 

She never intended to get invested. She knows that, if anything, she should be angry with Mulder—angry that she had her crash a funeral, angry that he involved her with illegal online hacking, angry that he’s making her think about cancer and death and what it’s like to be dying, but she can’t. No matter how hard she tries to will herself into anger, all she can feel is excitement and curiosity. 

 

She’s very literally dying, and she’s never felt more alive.

 

It’s Sunday morning. They’re both dressed as though they just left church, because Scully suggested it would help their image if they looked more put together. This time she’s made sure they have a plan. They’re sticking with Mulder’s original story—that he’s a family friend of Betsy’s—and Scully is going to pretend to be his girlfriend. 

 

“We don’t know how close Penny and Betsy were, so it’s best if we keep the details of your family’s relationship with her vague and distant. Like, maybe your mom frequented her Mary Kay parties and had her over for dinner a couple of times. Something to warrant condolences, but not something so extreme that we’d be completely torn up about it,” Scully had said. “And now we’re just passing on our good will towards Penny, because we struck up conversation with someone who knew her at Betsy’s funeral, and we just wanted to let her know there were people out there keeping her in their thoughts.”

 

It felt skeezy. Lying her way to a woman’s deathbed to gather information wasn’t Scully’s usual M.O., but, she reminded herself, it was for a good reason. Mulder seemed convinced there was something more heinous behind the death of Betsy besides a routine case of terminal cancer, and if that were true, then that should be exposed. They couldn’t very well go to the cops saying, “a copy of Betsy’s obituary was slipped under his door, and we tried to hack a government file on her that shouldn’t exist, so maybe you should look into this.” No, this was on them.

 

Plus, she had the cancer card. She could go to the deathbed of a woman dying of cancer, because secret or not, she was going through the same thing. When the guilt snuck past her good samaritan reasoning, she justified it as a need to know what her last days were going to look like. 

 

She hadn’t breathed a word of it to Mulder. If it were up to her, she never would. When she met him on the balcony, she expected him to be just a blip in her life and then be gone, but now it had been weeks and her relationship with him was growing. She had many acquaintances, some she liked just fine, but it was rare for her to make friends. She was fine keeping to herself, and needn’t clutter her life with extraneous things like people and all the baggage they brought with them. But Mulder was different. She didn’t have to try with him. The chemistry was involuntary, and she knew there’d be no shaking him now.

 

But the closer they got, and the longer she went without telling him the truth, the harder it was going to be when she finally let the cat out of the bag.

 

How would she even phrase it?

 

It’s been real nice getting to know you, but now I’ve got to die? 

 

The case they were on—because let’s face it, they were essentially kids playing secret agent, and this was their case—was playing at the strings of her subconscious, like a constant drone of C. C, c, c. Cancer, cancer, cancer. Betsy had cancer. Helena had cancer. Penny had cancer. And Scully, you liar, you have cancer too.

 

“You’re quiet,” says Mulder. “What are you thinking about?”

 

“Penny,” she doesn’t lie. “Wondering what it must be like for her to know she’s going to die. Do you ever think about that?”

 

Mulder ponders the question. “I think knowing you’re going to die would be like wanting to live every moment you possibly could, and also not seeing the point of it either, because there’s no way you can live all of life at once. But then again,” he adds. “No one can do every single thing in one lifetime, and if you know you’re going to die, the best thing to do would just be grateful for the parts of life you were able to experience, instead of mourning the ones you didn’t get to. What about you?”

 

Scully stares blankly out the window and doesn’t answer for a very long moment.

 

“I think it feels like getting stuck at a never changing stoplight,” she says. “While the rest of the world has nothing but green lights, and continues on, leaving you behind.”

 

—-

 

As a pre-med student, Scully has an appreciation for hospitals. As a dying person, she hates them. The rush of doctors and nurses carting around charts and carts and samples reminds her of the chemistry of the body and the science of the cells, meanwhile the smell of antiseptic reminds her of the prick of blood draws and the stillness of CAT scans and the whirr of the x-ray machines.

 

Hospitals are like her, she thinks, a tangible combination of science and sickness. On one hand she feels comfortable, and on the other she wants to flee. 

 

She follows Mulder into the elevator, which is wide and makes her think of patients being rushed around on portable hospital beds up and down the floors. They get off at the oncology ward, and she’s happy to be in a cancer treatment center without the focus being on her own tumor. No needle pricks or scans today. Today she’s playing secret agent.

 

Mulder nudges her shoulder, and nods towards the waiting area up past the information desk. A woman of about thirty sits in a chair leafing through a magazine she seems utterly disinterested in. “Isn’t that Claire Northern?” Mulder asks her, and as he asks it she recognizes her from the profile picture she saw on Penny’s page.

 

“I think it is,” she tells him and he nods.

 

“I wanna go talk to her,” he says. “See what she knows.”

 

“Both of us?” 

 

“Do you think she might feel ganged up on? Maybe you should go check out Penny’s room, and I’ll catch up with you when I’m done with Claire.”

 

Scully’s stomach drops a little at the thought of entering Penny Northern’s room without Mulder there beside her to help facilitate the lie, but then again, she is nothing if not stubborn with a constant thirst to prove herself. 

 

“Okay,” she says once she’s gathered herself. “But remember to keep it casual. Don’t act invasive or else she might get suspicious. You’re just a friend of Betsy’s who got curious about what Penny is going through.”

 

Mulder nods, and starts off towards the waiting area without another word. Scully takes a deep breath, and heads down a hallway full of patient rooms. She gets to the end of the 300s and makes a turn, and right there is room 402, just barely cracked open. She hesitates before knocking lightly.

 

“I’m awake,” says a quiet voice. Scully pushes herself through the door in a fluid motion motivated entirely by adrenaline. 

 

Penny Northern is harder for her to look at than she anticipated.

 

She’s a young woman who has clearly aged over a short period of time. The bags under her eyes are dark like night, and she wears a floral designed wrap around her bald head. She’s got a cannula in her nose and IV in her hand. Is this, Scully thinks, my future?

 

Penny moves her head towards the doorway, and every movement is stilted, as though each exertion of muscle takes all of her effort. When she meets Scully’s eye, she does the most puzzling thing, and breaks into a wide, toothy grin.

 

“Dana,” she breathes, saying Scully’s name like an answered prayer. Scully blinks at her.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “How did...did someone tell you I was coming?” Penny shakes her head. “Then how’d you know who I was.”

 

“I recognized you,” says Penny. She holds out her arm, reaching towards Scully, and Scully has no desire to go towards it. But the skin on Penny is so thin it’s nearly translucent, and it clings to the bone without an ounce of body fat to cushion it, and it looks just so sick that instead of taking the step back she wants to take, she instead goes forward until she’s at the edge of Penny’s bed, and Penny gently takes Scully’s hand in her own. 

 

“Recognized me?” asks Scully, looking down at their clasped hands, Penny’s fingers cold against her own.

 

“From The Place,” Penny says. “We were together in The Place. Is that not why you’ve come?”

 

“No. Or well, I mean…” she struggles to find her words. “Betsy,” she says finally, and Penny closes her eyes and nods solemnly. 

 

“I was so sorry I couldn’t come to the funeral,” she says, and when she opens her eyes they are glistening. “She was such a good friend; such a comfort.” She stares at Scully for a long moment, but not at her eyes. She’s staring at the middle of her forehead, right above her nose. Her face falls, and with a sad smile, she says, “you’ve got it too.”

 

“Got...got what too?”

 

“The cancer,” says Penny, grasping Scully’s hand a little tighter. “Like the rest of us. Oh I’d hoped you’d be spared, Dana. You’re so young.”

 

Scully involuntarily tears her hand away, not meaning to be so harsh, but she can’t help it. Her voice trembles when she says, “how did you know about my cancer?”

 

If Penny is put off, she doesn’t show it. She draws her hand back and looks at Scully like she’s an injured child. “It’s happened to all of us, Dana. Everyone they took to The Place. All the women.”

 

“You keep saying The Place...am I supposed to understand what that means?” Her heart thrums all the way in her throat. 

 

“When you were taken,” Penny clarifies, and Scully stiffens. No one outside of her immediate family knows about her kidnapping. She never speaks of it. She’s buried it deep, down into the bowels of her brain, left as an unfortunate circumstance she has no desire to dig back up; something unexplained she never intends to unravel.

 

“I don’t know how you know about that,” she says, tears of vulnerability welling up in the corners of her eyes. “But I have no memory of what happened to me, and I’m sorry, but I don’t know you at all.” 

 

“Then why have you come?”

 

“My friend. Or, my boyfriend. Or, no, he’s just a...or well it doesn’t matter, it’s just that he was a friend of Betsy’s and he wanted...wanted to know…” she’s so taken aback by everything that’s gone down in the past three minutes that she can’t remember the story she and Mulder concocted. “We’re trying to make sense of it,” she says finally.

 

“Of your cancer?” asks Penny knowingly, and Scully shakes her head.

 

“No,” she says sharply. “Not mine. Yours. Betsy’s. The others.” 

 

“Your friend,” says Penny. “He’s trying to make sense of Betsy’s death, and he decided to come to me, a stranger, instead of you?” When Scully says nothing, Penny lets out a small ‘ah’ sound. “He doesn’t know,” she says, and Scully doesn’t deny it. “Dana,” Penny says, trying to reach towards Scully again, but this time she does take a step back. “Dana, if you truly don’t remember what happened to you, then that’s the first step you should be taking. I don’t have any answers for you. None that you don’t already have within yourself.”

 

“I’m not a part of this,” Scully says, tears actually falling now. “This is just coincidence.”

 

“You were the strong one,” says Penny. “In The Place, you were always so strong. Even when I was there comforting you, you never lost your edge.”

 

“Please stop,” says Scully, bending forward and covering her ears like a little kid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looks back up and Penny is still regarding her like a lost puppy she’s found in the woods.

 

“Try and make sense of it, Dana. The answers are in you.” 

 

That’s the limit. Without so much as a goodbye, Scully turns on her heel and rushes out of Penny’s room. In the hallway she collides headon with Mulder, who sees her tear stained face and startles. 

 

“Scully…?” he starts, but Scully just shakes her head.

 

“She doesn’t have any information,” she says curtly. “It’s a dead end, we’ll have to look somewhere else.”

 

“Maybe if I talk to her—”

 

“I said it’s a dead end,” says Scully sharply, shouldering past him and walking towards the exit. He hesitates, but she soon hears his heavy footsteps behind her. 

 

In the elevator, he asks, “what happened? Why do you seem so upset?”

 

“It’s nothing.” She doesn’t even try for a half-truth. Right now she’s perfectly fine with lying. “It’s nothing, and she can’t help us figure out what’s significant with Betsy, so we should probably just drop it.”

 

“I don’t know,” says Mulder. “I was talking to her sister, and I got some information about what could have been a possible abduction.”

 

“Penny Northern has nothing to do with this,” says Scully, meeting Mulder’s eyes with a staggering glare. “Drop it.” 

 

She says nothing else. They leave the hospital, and Scully can nearly hear the million questions floating in Mulder’s head, and she isn’t going to answer a single one. Not today, and maybe not ever. They drive in a painful silence, and when they get back to campus, Scully takes off for her dorm, mumbling something about homework she needs to do, leaving Mulder a puzzled mess behind her.

 

When she gets to her dorm, she’s relieved to see Monica’s bed empty. She climbs into her own and burrows herself under her blankets, and begins to cry. 

 

She cries because of the past she’s tried to forget. She cries because of Penny Northern. She cries because she’s dying.

 

But most of all, she cries because of Fox Mulder, because she knows that he has questions, and she knows she’ll have to tell him, sooner rather than later, and she’ll have to see his face when he hears the word ‘terminal.’ 

  
And she cries because of Mulder, because before he came into her life, cancer could have just taken her, and she could have just died silently, with no mysteries to unravel at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're officially off hiatus, folks, after a very, very long time. my apologies. updates should be fairly regular from here on out. 
> 
> visit my main blog at mostlyboob-partiallystars.tumblr.com
> 
> visit my x-files blog at alexkryceksbutt.tumblr.com
> 
> or, if for some reason you're interested, visit my harry potter blog at  
> severus-snape-is-a-butt-trumpet.tumblr.com
> 
> thanks, friends


	9. Chapter 9

When she wakes the next morning, it takes Scully a minute to remember why she feels so terrible. Then the image of Penny Northern’s face, full of recognition and sympathy, comes flooding back to her, and she burrows deeper into her blankets, willing the thoughts away, because cancer was supposed to be simple.

 

Not the science of it; she knows that cancer comes in a multitude of flavors, and every flavor is unique in its manifestation. But in the most fundamental of senses, cancer should be simple. Your cells mutate, and either you defeat them or they defeat you, hook line sinker, the end.

 

But what if her cancer is not so simple? What if her cancer is a part of something bigger?

 

Penny seemed to know something about Scully that she doesn’t know about herself. Mulder, although wont to believe in the fantastic all the time, seemed particularly invested in the idea that whatever happened to Betsy and Penny—and, possibly, to Scully, although he didn't know it—was part of some larger agenda. But Scully didn't want to be a part of any sort of agenda.

She wonders how long she can avoid him before he comes knocking at her door, asking for answers about her behavior the night before. She tries to tell herself that she owes him nothing, but inside she knows that's not true. Mulder, however ridiculous, or so-called spooky, he may be, has become an intrinsic part of her life in a very short period of time. He deserves the truth from her, but she's not sure she's ready to give it.

So when her phone pings sometime around 2 in the afternoon, she doesn't pick it up right away. She pretends she's busy, doing her physics homework she is hardly paying attention to at all. She tries to do her sums, trying to comfort herself with numbers—something tangible and reliable, not full of mystery and ambiguity—but the unread text message sitting on her phone festers in the back of her mind like an untreated wound, and she soon finds her phone in her hand.

 

“ _we don't have to talk about it, but thought u might want to know that the lone gunmen found a file on penny. same as betsy’s_.”

 

She stares at her phone absently for a moment, weighing the consequences of replying. Finally, after several minutes of deliberation, she sends a quick text saying, “ _i don’t want to talk about it_.”

 

His reply comes almost instantaneously, saying, “ _ok, what do you want to talk about?_ ”

 

She sends back a single word—” _nothing_ ”—and then amends it by sending another text, adding, “ _just not right now. i have a lot of homework, and i’m not feeling that well_.” She was going back to her half truths, which she figured was better than blatant lying, although it didn’t feel any better. She turns her phone on silent and slides it into her pocket, not waiting for his reply.

 

She scans her physics homework in front of her, examining it and searching the problems, but it all looks foreign to her. The numbers that usually calm her, that sooth her, are suddenly incomprehensible, and she shoves the papers away with a frustrated hand, and runs her fingers through her hair, not sure what she wants to do.

 

She has this feeling in her belly, this feeling of desperately needing to do _something_ , but not knowing what that something is. She could go back to sleep—she didn’t have a class until late, and it wasn’t as if they kept her attendance anyway—but that wasn’t the type of feeling this was; she didn’t want to sleep it away.

 

She goes through a list of every possible thing she could do that day, trying to see if anything speaks to that feeling in her belly, but nothing seems to satiate it.

 

What _was_ the feeling? She goes over it again and again, trying to pinpoint the vague discomfort it leaves her in. Finally it dawns on her. Curiosity. Overbearing, overwhelming, curiosity.

 

And not the type of curiosity she usually had—the kind that kept her up at night, pouring over scientific research, well beyond what’s needed for her coursework, simply because she’s fascinated by it. No, this curiosity was deep and unpleasant; she felt it in her bones, and it hurt.

 

What did Peggy mean when she said that she knew her? _How_ did she know her?

 

Of course that is what’s bothering her. Of course it is. And while she wants nothing more than to repress it, it’s obvious that isn’t happening. She’s going to have to face it, but she isn’t sure how.

 

She isn’t going to go back to the hospital, not now, not ever; the image of Penny half dead under thin, hospital sheets was enough to last her a lifetime. But if not there, then where else could she look for answers?

 

Mulder was the obvious answer, but involving him would mean having a conversation she wasn’t yet ready to have.

 

She gets an idea, doesn’t like it, isn’t sure it will even work, but she has to know—has to quell this feeling in her belly somehow, and maybe, if she’s lucky, get some relief; relief from the torturous circles her mind is running around in, with glaring words like CONSPIRACY and ABDUCTION at the forefront. She never thought she would pray to God that she had a normal, every day type of terminal cancer, but she sends a mantra of “please, please, please,” in the vague direction of up, hoping that some faceless entity will let her die blandly. The alternative, the mysteries, are more than she can handle.

 

She grabs her coat, slips on her shoes, bundles herself up, and goes out to find her car in the student parking lot. She drives off in a direction she thinks is right, with no certainty except a fuzzy mental map and her intuition.

 

She makes about ten wrong turns going down different roads, trying to remember the path Mulder had taken her on, going almost entirely by sight. Does this look familiar? Does this?

 

She always pays attention when she drives—not just to the road, but to everything. Driving, to her, is an opportunity to take in the world, and since she was a child, even short trips to the grocery store were spent observing the neighborhood and it’s every facet. To this day, she could tell you how many shingles were missing on the blue house off the corner from the elementary school, and what color the hardware shop building used to be before they tore it down and made it into a Walmart. She’s glad for her attention to detail now, as she tries to navigate blindly, a ways off from campus, down roads she’s never driven herself.

 

Finally, after almost convincing herself to give up, she reaches the house.

 

She knows it on sight. It is small, rundown, and slightly hidden by a brush tree. Its angle on the block makes the sun cast shadows on the brick at this time of day, and it looks so dark and mysterious compared to the other houses that Scully would laugh if she were in the mood. She sits outside for nearly ten minutes, debating whether or not she should go up and knock. There is no way, she keeps telling herself, that this wasn’t going to get back to Mulder. And how wronged would he feel if he thought she trusted him so little that she had to go behind his back?

 

But another part of her thinks that while she knew it would reach Mulder eventually, maybe it could buy her some time. Maybe it could give her a chance to pull herself together so that _she_ could be the one to approach him, but only after she had the answers.

 

This side of her wins out. With a deep breath, she opens the driver’s side door and walks up to the house. She lingers on the porch for a moment, staring at the dead grass with patches of snow, before forcing herself to rap on the door three times in quick succession. She puts her hands deep inside her pockets, willing herself to swallow down her anxiety.

 

This isn’t ridiculous, she tries to convince herself, nor is it a betrayal. In fact, she has not lied to Mulder, and she isn’t lying by doing this. Coming here? It was simply one of her half truths; one of the ways she bent honesty to keep herself safe. Truths, after all, are not always so concrete. They can be fickle; uncertain.

 

Soon she hears the sound of footsteps, and the unlocking of innumerable locks and chains being undone. When the door opens she casts her eyes down to see Frohike, shorter even than her, looking up, surprised.

 

“Well Dana Scully, as I live and breathe,” he says with such familiarity it’s as though he’s known her forever. “Mulder didn’t tell me you two were coming out. Where is he?”

 

“It’s just me,” Scully says, her voice steady. It’s a skill Scully prides herself on—being able to sound confident when everything inside her is insecure.

 

Frohike blinks at her, taken off guard.

 

“What do you mean?” he asks.

 

“I have something I need your help with,” she says. “Something I can’t tell Mulder. Not yet, anyway, not without some answers. But I promise I will tell him,” she adds quickly, the words falling out in an  ungraceful jumble. “I promise. I’m not asking you to lie, just...I need help and you’re the only ones who can do it. Will you help me?”

 

Frohike doesn’t answer for a long moment, regarding her with suspicion. Perhaps, Scully thinks with a mental kick to the butt, the next time she needed help doing something shady, she shouldn’t go to people who keep ten locks on their doors and distrusts even the mailman for working for the government.

 

But Frohike, to her surprise, doesn’t turn her out. He glances behind her, as if she may have been followed, and then ushers her inside, before securing the door behind them.

 

The other two men amble into the room to see who their visitor is.

 

“Where’s Mulder?” asks Langly as soon as he sees Scully standing in their doorway.

 

“It’s just her,” says Frohike, and the other two seem just as lost as he is.

 

“I need your help with something,” she says again, reiterating so this time the others can hear. “It has to do with that file we found on Betsy Hagopian.”

 

“What about it?” asks Langly.

 

“I need to know,” she says in a calculated tone, “what comes up when you do the same thing with my name.”

 

There is a tense silence while they process this.

 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Red, I mean, you’re lovely,” says Frohike. “But what makes you think your name would be in some random, classified government database?”

 

“Hopefully it isn’t,” says Scully. “But that’s why I need you guys to check.”

 

“Why didn’t Mulder just call us?” asks Langly. “Why’d you drive all the way out here?”

 

“She hasn’t told him about it,” Frohike answers for her, and her cheeks redden with guilt.

 

“This is obviously a personal matter,” she says. “I just wanted to know everything myself before I got him involved. It’s just a search, a single search, that’s all I’m asking from you. If you can’t do it, tell me now, and I’ll leave.”

 

It’s Byers who takes the initiative. Frohike and Langly, seemingly unable to rectify this strange turn of events, stand motionless until Byers goes towards the computer and starts clacking on some keys. After a moment, they follow.

 

Scully stands back at a slight distance. She can’t see the screen, and isn’t sure she wants to. She feels out of place and awkward, a strange childish guilt consuming her, as though she’s just gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar, but this feeling quickly dissipates when the other three all turn to stare at her with the exact same look.

 

“What is it?” she asks. “What did you find?”

 

They move over so she can see for herself. Reluctantly, she takes the few steps to the computer. Her stomach drops. Right there, right on the screen, is her name in a file labeled classified.

 

“Can you open it?” Her voice is level.

 

Byers’ fingers start clacking again. A moment later, an access denied sign flashes up at them, just as it had with Betsy’s, and he shakes his head. “It’s beyond our skill level, I’m afraid.”

 

“What the hell is your name doing in that database?” asks Frohike. “And how’d you know that it would be?”

 

Scully isn’t sure how to answer. She decides, maybe for the first time that day, to go with the untampered truth.

 

“Because I was abducted,” she says, and at their faces she quickly adds, “I don’t mean by aliens. I mean, I had an experience when I was little—a kidnapping—that closely resembles Betsy’s. But believe me when I say I never thought of it as some grand conspiracy. It was just something that happened; some unfortunate road block in my life that I’ve just tried to move past. And I had moved past it, or I would have, if it...if I didn’t have the same cancer that killed Betsy Hagopian.”

 

Three pairs of eyebrows rise at her.

 

“Mulder doesn’t know you’re sick,” says Frohike, piecing it together after the long silence. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell him.”

 

“I barely even know him,” Scully says, more to herself than to the others. “It was all just a fluke. If I hadn’t been invited to a party one night, we never would have met, and I never would have known any of this, and part of me is starting to think that that would have been preferable.”

 

“How long do you have?” asks Byers, in the gentlest voice one can ask that question.

 

“I don’t know. A year? Six months? Hell, tomorrow? Who knows?”

 

“But it’s terminal?” asks Byers, and she nods.

 

“I promise I’ll tell Mulder,” she says after another tense silence, although this one is more familiar. It was the same silence she always got whenever she talked about her cancer. It was a pity silence; a sadness silence; a ‘ what the hell do I say to this?’ silence. She loathed it. “I just needed to know before I told him.”

 

“What are you going to tell him, though? To be clear, we don’t even know what we just found,” says Byers.

 

“No we don’t,” says Scully. “But we know it’s something, and we know other people are involved. Mulder told me he contacted you about Penny.”

 

“He did,” Byers agrees. “He also said that _you_ said Penny had nothing to do with this.” Scully shakes her head.

 

“Penny has everything to do with this. She just got a little too close for comfort, is all.”

 

“I think he likes you,” Frohike decides to say. “I think maybe a lot.”

 

“...What makes you say that?” she asks her shoes. This is an unwelcome tangent, and terrifying territory, but she also needs to know.

 

“We haven’t talked much since you guys came by, but every time we have, your name has come up. He trusts you, and trust is probably the highest honor Fox Mulder can bestow on a person. He’s a special guy, that kid. Be careful with him.”

 

Scully looks at the screen flashing ‘access denied’ and sighs.

 

“I’m not so sure that I can.”  

 

—-

 

Mulder isn’t sure where he’d gone wrong.

 

The trample through the woods that ended with a rifle in their faces and a broken down car in the middle of the vacant highway hadn’t scared her away.

 

Telling her that his sister had been abducted, possibly by aliens, hadn’t scared her away.

 

He had her crash a _goddamned funeral_ under false pretenses, and yet, still she remained.

 

But somehow, Peggy Northern had been the deal breaker, and Mulder couldn’t make heads or tails as to why.

 

All day Monday, except for three texts in the morning, Mulder received nothing but a heaping dose of radio silence from Scully. Tuesday, he got a little bit more attention, but the conversation was stilted and it was all one word answers. Wednesday, she sent him a three-line diatribe about why her biochemistry professor was bastardizing the scientific method (evidently he compromised data of students he didn’t like, but Scully couldn’t prove it so she couldn’t report it), but the rest of their conversation was still awkward, and Mulder was becoming convinced that this was how it was going to remain until it finally just faded into nothing.

 

He found himself thinking that maybe he should just accept it; this strange thing had run its course. This amazing, wonderful thing—woman—who had come into his life so suddenly, was going to now leave him just as abruptly.

 

He wanted to just let it go, reminding himself that he’d lived over two decades without Dana Scully, and he certainly could do it again, but it wasn’t that easy. He thought that he had actually made a friend—a genuine friend who he could trust with all the things that were hard for him to tell. And now, somehow (and for chrissake, he didn’t even know how) he had scared her away.

 

But then came Thursday. And oh! what a wonderful Thursday it is, because when he finally rolls out of bed after skipping his morning class, because who really feels up to class right after getting dumped (because that’s what it felt like, even if they weren’t a couple), he picks up his phone and sees that he has one new text from the contact name, Scully.

 

“ _lunch today_?”

 

Two words have never looked so beautiful.

 

Oh how he wanted to see her. He had been missing her all week, and didn’t realize just how much until the prospect of being able to see her was a reality.

 

He sends back a “ _yes_ ,” leaving off all the exclamation marks he is feeling, trying to sound casual, as if she were a nervous animal, and any little thing might make her jump and run. “ _where and when?_ ”

 

It takes an agonizing twenty minutes for her to reply.

 

“ _i get lunch off campus on thursdays, remember? any place you’re feeling up for?_ ”

 

He does not feel like making any of the decisions during this exchange, for fear of screwing up this already tenuous situation between them.

 

“ _i don’t eat off campus much. u gotta favorite place?_ ”

 

He thinks that’s a safe card to play.

 

“ _there’s a little hole-in-the-wall deli within walking distance. best sandwich you’ll ever have._ ”

 

He doesn’t doubt it.

 

—-

 

They meet at their usual meeting place outside the student union, and when she spots him, she smiles. It isn’t a big smile, there are no teeth, and she doesn’t seem ecstatic, but she also doesn’t seem angry or reserved. She seems pleased. Dana Scully is pleased to see him.

 

And Mulder _is_ ecstatic at that.

 

“Hey there, stranger,” he says in what can only be called his Nonchalant Voice. At it, she lets out a huff of breath, confirming that it sounds just as lame is it feels.

 

“You don’t have to pretend that the past few days haven’t been awkward,” she says. “I know I’ve been...uncommunicative.”

 

“I haven’t noticed,” Mulder says too quickly, and she raises an eyebrow at him. He relents. “Well, okay, I may have noticed a little. You wanna talk about it?”

 

She chews on her bottom lip and says, “how terrible would it be of me if I said no. At least, not right now?”

 

Mulder, who searches for the answers to all unasked questions, and is somewhat invested in the answer to this particular question, is not in the market of pushing his luck, so he just says, “that’s perfectly fine. Shall we get lunch?”

 

This time her smile is wider, warmer, with a hint of relief Mulder doesn’t miss, and she says, “yes, let’s,” and she holds out her arm, allowing him to link his own through hers in the world’s most wonderful act of physical affection Mulder has ever experienced, and they walk like that the entire way to the deli, making idle chitchat, as though the past few days haven’t happened. How easily, Mulder thinks, they’ve fallen back into that natural chemistry that has been present since the start.

 

“What should I get here?” Mulder asks when they approach the counter.

 

“The Italian sub,” she says without skipping a beat. “Add on pickles and their spicy mayo. It’s loaded with saturated fat and probably takes two hours of straight cardio to metabolize the calories, but here it’s worth it.” And Mulder just beams at the quintessential Scullyness of the response—the girl who puts light cream cheese on her whole grain bagels while factoring the details of the science behind the digestive process, while simultaneously drinking Mulder’s speciality latte when she thinks he isn’t looking. He has missed this, all the way down into his core.

 

“What the lady said,” he tells the cashier, pulling out his wallet to pay, but Scully waves it away.

 

“You got my coffee the other day, I owe you,” and Mulder gets the distinct impression that the coffee isn’t exactly what she’s trying to make up for, and while he wants to tell her she doesn’t have to apologize for the past few days, he knows she’d appreciate it more if he just let her make amends her own way, and so he slides his wallet back into his pocket while Scully swipes her card and enters her pin. He wonders what it is, and how she came up with it. Scully is logical, but with a passionate side. He imagines it’s a string of numbers that to anyone else would be completely random, but to her, hold some higher significance. He files the question away in his mental folder on Scully, which had gathered dust over the past few days, and he revels in the opportunity to reopen it.

 

What a fucking mystery she was; maybe more than any other mystery he’d ever come across. Or, well, he amends, at least the one he cared about the most, the only contender being the hollowness of his missing sister that always loitered in the background.

 

But how could he not find her an absolute enigma? After all, it was just days before that she had inexplicable tears stinging her eyes in a hospital elevator, followed by one of the tensest weeks of his life, and now, just as mystifying as before, here she was, buying him lunch on a cold winter’s day.

 

He was going to have to know why, eventually, and he knew they both knew that, but for now, for this small period of time out of a million other moments that were going to come to pass, he was perfectly content to accept this for what it was: Lunch between two friends.

 

Lunch between two friends. What a strange concept, he thought, but a nice one nevertheless. He has friends, but they are all shrouded with expectation; they are friendships of convenience—friendships based in, “I’ll tell you what I know if you tell me what you know.” An amicable exchange of a government conspiracy version of, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Mulder can’t remember a time he ever got a lunch with someone just because they were both hungry and could—a lunchtime date, just because.

 

“So Scully,” Mulder says after a while. “You got plans tomorrow?”

 

“Hadn’t booked anything solid in my schedule,” she says, licking a bit of sauce off the corner of her mouth with her tongue, which Mulder decidedly pays no attention to. Boundaries, he concludes, are more important than ever right now. “I got an invite to some pre-finals party, but I’m not sure I’ll be up to fending off drunken frat boy advances, so I was probably going to skip it. Why do you ask?”

 

“Well,” Mulder says conspiratorially, probably about to push his luck, but honestly, it was going to happen eventually, it might as well be now. “Remember those two guys from the diner?”

 

“What, you mean in that place in rural Pennsylvania? The two guys with the Loch Ness Monster story?”

 

“No no, not Nessie, _Bessie_. The one in Lake Erie.”

 

“To answer your question, yes, I do remember. Quite vividly, I might add. I take it I already know what you’re doing with your Friday.”

 

“Pretty easy deduction, huh? But, hey, they invited me, it’d be rude to turn them down,” Mulder says with a mischievous grin.

 

“Don’t even say it,” says Scully before Mulder can even get a word in. “Don’t even try it, I know right where this is going, and you better shut your mouth right this second,” but it isn’t genuine. She isn’t angry or off put, and is, in fact, smiling into her sandwich, which was, by the way, one of the better sandwiches Mulder had ever had. She’s refusing to make eye contact with Mulder, which is wise of her, because he knows that she’s a sucker for his eager face, hiding a wealth of insecurity beneath it, and all it would take is one lift of an eyebrow to crumple her resolve. Somehow, she finds him endearing, which is beyond lucky for him.

 

“You did say you weren’t doing anything,” Mulder says. “Plus, they invited both of us. What am I supposed to do? Just show up alone?”

 

“You could just not show up at all,” Scully reminds him. At Mulder’s shrug, Scully takes a sip of her soda and regards him with narrowed eyes over the rim of her glass. When she puts it down on the table with a small ‘clink’, there’s a stain from her lipstick still lingering from where her lips were, and Mulder finds it uncomfortably erotic, and he quickly has to quell the thoughts that come flooding of what else would stain if she pressed her lips to it.

 

“You want me,” she says, in a very level and calculated voice, “to go drive over five hours to Lake Erie, searching for the Loch Ness Monster—” she holds up her hand before Mulder can object, “—excuse me. To go searching for a Loch Ness Monster Vegas act, with a couple of strangers we met in one of the most ridiculous diners I’ve ever been in?”

 

“That about sums it up,” says Mulder, popping the last bit of his sandwich into his mouth. “It’ll be in the middle of the night, too. I’ve already been in contact with them. Apparently the best time to catch fish is before dawn, so they’re planning to head out late Friday so they can be out in the water during twilight hours, and then head back later Saturday morning.” He grins cheekily at her, adding, “sounds like one hell of an adventure, right?”

 

Scully laughs.

 

“Yeah, ok,” she says with considerably less hesitation than Mulder is expecting.. “Gotta live life to the fullest, right? What time do we leave?”

 

Mulder’s heart does a dance.

 

—-

 

“Y’all ever gone boat fishin’?”

 

“No,” Mulder says, just as Scully says “yes.” He furrows a brow at her, and she shrugs.

 

“Back when my dad was stationed in San Diego he’d rent out a boat on the weekends and we’d go fishing out on the Pacific,” she explains. “My older brother was already enlisted in the Navy, my younger brother was at that age where doing things with Mom and Dad was akin to pulling teeth, and my sister had no interest in anything that might mess up her fingernails, so it was just me and him.”

 

Into the mental file the information goes, while Benny and Earl, the two men from the diner, continue.

 

“Well, we do fishing the old fashioned way out here,” says Benny. “We bait our own hooks and clean our own fish like proper fishermen.” From beside him, Mulder hears Scully snort and cover it up with a cough.

 

“And don’t think this is just a free ride to go monster hunting,” Earl says, wagging a finger in their direction. “You gonna come on this boat you’re gonna work. We got a quota to meet. We’re looking for smallmouth bass, but we’ll take walleyes too. Anything under 8 inches, throw it back, unless it’s a cat, then let us inspect it first, cuz those have been a pain in the ass to catch, so we might keep ‘em if they’re on the line. Clear?”

 

Mulder hears approximately none of what’s said to him, considering this to be, in fact, a  free ride to go monster hunting, but he nods anyway, and adjusts the bulky pack on his shoulder full of snacks and a thick blanket (which he may or may not have packed with the mental image of sitting beneath it with Scully next to him, their knees touching, which he’d feel a bit guilty about if it weren’t for the fact that the extent of his fantasies are about fully clothed knee touches, which seems more pathetic than invasive).

 

The sun isn’t even hinting at rising by the time they load onto the boat. Scully showed up at his dorm room door at a quarter to nine at night, bundled in about seven layers and already looking like she regretted agreeing to this, and then slept for the majority of the near six hour drive to the coast of Lake Erie, where Benny and Earl were already waiting for them, the boat idling at the dock.

 

Now, it’s a bit past three thirty, and under the light of the lanterns hung in various corners of the boat, Mulder can see her hair unkempt and staticy underneath a pair of comically large earmuffs. He can see his breath in front of him in a thick, billowy fog, and his fingers tingle with the chill even under a heavy pair of gloves. He’s pretty sure Scully would freeze to death if she weren’t wearing, “two pairs of thermal underwear, a pair of leggings, a t-shirt, a sweater, a jacket, a winter coat, and a pair of snow pants,” as she had rattled off at him when he had tried and failed not to laugh at the way she could barely bend her arms.

 

“You look like the little brother in _A Christmas Story_ ,” he’d said, and she covered up her embarrassment with pursed lips and a logical, “do you know how cold it’ll be on the water before the sun rises?” and now he’s glad she came so prepared, because she’s got this look on her face that is almost giddy, like she’s actually excited to go out on this adventure, and she hasn’t mentioned the cold once, even though he can see her nose and cheeks tinted red in the breeze.

 

The boat isn’t huge, but it’s big enough, with a little room below deck they can go if things get really cold, and enough width across that they’d have to shout if they’re on opposite sides. Earl pulls the boat from the dock, and they’re off. Scully sits on a bench attached to the floorboards, and Mulder sits beside her.

 

As they get deeper into the lake, Benny comes over with a tackle box and a couple of poles. “Can you manage a couple spincasters?” he asks Scully, who nods. “You’ll show him how?” He glances at Mulder, clearly knowing that Mulder hasn’t touched a fishing rod in his life. Scully nods again. “Good. There are extra weights, hooks, and line in the box, along with some bait.”

 

“Got it,” she says, and she takes the poles from Benny, gathering them in her small grasp, struggling a bit to hold onto them with all her layers on, but when Mulder moves to help her she shoots him a defiant look, and he backs away without a word.

 

“So where exactly were you when you saw Bessie the last time?” Mulder asks Benny, changing the topic to more important matters.

 

“I’ll never get why Earl thought it would be a good idea to try to find that thing _again_. I wouldn’t go 100 feet of it, not after last time,” says Benny bitterly, putting his hands on his hips and staring out into the darkness of the lake with narrowed eyes, as if there were some tangible evil just out of sight. Maybe, thought Mulder, there was.

 

“But will we be going near the coordinates where you two spotted it last time?”

 

Benny’s stink eye would have shut people with more social dignity right up, but Mulder just stares at him expectantly, until he sighs, and says, “Earl is insisting on going to the same place we went two weeks ago. Lucky for him it’s a good fishing spot, otherwise I doubt he would have been able to convince me back out there.” He pulls a compass out of his pocket, and checks the watch on his left wrist. “Should reach it in about ten, fifteen minutes.” He turns to leave, but says over his shoulder, sounding displeased, “hope that’s good enough for you, Mr. Mulder.” He points at the poles. “Remember, this aint no free ride. Get those lines in the water as soon as we stop.”

 

“Must you torture the poor man?” asks Scully, untangling the lines so she can separate the rods from each other. “He’s obviously scared.”

 

“Makes you wonder what he’s scared of,” Mulder says, and Scully rolls her eyes.

 

“Mulder, the number of studies I could cite discussing fear-based hallucination, not to mention the fact that these men do their work in isolation in the dark—”

 

“You know we don’t actually have to fish,” Mulder interrupts, cutting off what was surely going to be a very logical take on what it was their new fishermen friends saw last time they were on the lake. “ As long as we just put on a good show we can spend our time looking for Bessie.”

 

Scully, who is already digging through the tackle box and taking out random things Mulder has no idea the use of, meets his eye, and says, very seriously, “Mulder, this aint no free ride,” which catches Mulder so off guard he startles into a raucous laugh.

 

“Admit it,” he says when he’s composed himself. “You just wanna go fishin’.” He says it in his best southern accent, which is still immensely subpar, and Scully smiles.

 

“What can I say?” she says. “Guess I’ll always be a bit of a tomboy at heart.”

 

She hands a pole to Mulder, and then picks up a small, styrofoam box, opening it with a gloved hand, and holds it out to him. In it, he can see moist, black dirt, with bits of worm poking out all over. He wrinkles his nose.

 

“What?” Scully asks, much too amused. “Too scared to bait your own hook?”

 

“Don’t know how,” says Mulder, omitting the, ‘and I don’t particularly want to learn,’ that follows in his head. Scully seems to hear it anyway, and smugly pulls off her glove with her front teeth, and uses her bare hand to pull up a particularly juicy worm up from the soil.

 

“You wanna make sure the hook is covered,” she says, pulling off the other glove and taking hold of the end of her line where a thin, shiny hook is tied to it. She glides the hook through the worm, not even flinching as its insides ooze out onto her fingers. It makes sense, of course, Mulder is sure she’s dissected animals before. She’s sliced and diced at various internal organs, and she is, after all, a pre-med student, so she’s bound to have a pretty solid stomach, but he’s still impressed at the ease at which she baits her hook, and then wipes her fingers on her pants like it’s nothing.

 

“That’s disgusting,” Mulder says. The way he says ‘disgusting’ makes it sound synonymous with ‘astonishing.’

 

“Your turn, then,” she says and Mulder grimaces.

 

“Is there any way I can refuse without betraying my cool exterior?” he asks, slipping his hands out of his gloves and digging through the box of worms. Scully watches with a badly suppressed grin while Mulder tries to copy what she’d done. By the time he finally gives up, his worm is hanging off the hook haphazardly, like one light nibble from a fish would rip it right off, and Scully ends up snatching the pole from him, and manages to take Mulder’s disaster and make it just as immaculate as her own.

 

The boat stops not long after, and the sound of lines being cast into the water comes from where Benny and Earl are, and Scully nudges Mulder and has him copy her as she shows him how to cast his own line. His first attempt causes his line to crossover Scully’s, and she takes a good five minutes trying to untie them.

 

“Now what?” Mulder asks, once they’ve finally got their lines where they want them.

 

“We wait,” Scully says. “If you feel a nibble, jerk your pole to try and catch the hook on the fish’s mouth.”

 

“We just sit here?” Mulder asks, fully aware that he sounds like a whiny child.

 

“You’ve really never gone fishing?” Scully asks incredulously, and Mulder shakes his head.

 

“My family wasn’t big on the outdoor activities,” he says. “Well, I was an Eagle Scout with my Dad for a few years, but most of that was animal tracking and ‘which of these berries are poisonous,’ that kind of thing. Then, after Samantha, the father/son activities pretty much stopped cold.” Mulder takes off his pack and pulls out a half opened bag of sunflower seeds. He takes a couple and pops them into his mouth. “Want some?” He holds them out to Scully.

 

“I’ll pass,” she says, watching him pick out shells and flick them into the lake.

 

“So what about your family?” asks Mulder.

 

“What about it?”

 

“You don’t talk about them much. I didn’t even know you had siblings. What else are you hiding?”

 

“There really isn’t much to tell,” says Scully, looking out at the lake pensively. “They’re just your typical family. My parents have been married for nearly thirty years. They’ve got four kids, a house in Maryland, and my brother Bill is getting serious with his girlfriend, so I doubt it’ll be much longer before they’ve got grandkids.” She shrugs.

 

“Okay, but every family’s got at least one dark secret, there’s gotta be something. A cousin in prison, a teenage pregnancy, an alien abduction conspiracy, _something_.”

 

“What was that last one?” asks Scully, the corner of her mouth quipped up.

 

“Yeah, well, that one may be unique to my family.”

 

Scully turns back to the lake, says nothing for just a few beats too long, and then shrugs again. “What can I say?” she says, not meeting his eye. “We’re the American dream.”

 

“Guess so,” Mulder agrees. “Can’t exactly see you fitting into a nuclear family mold, though.”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Oh come on, tell me you weren’t a total rebel in high school. This whole,” he waves his hand around Scully to indicate her entire person. “I dunno, punk rock persona can’t just be a college image thing.”

 

This makes Scully laugh. “You’re making assumptions based on appearance.”

 

“And you’re not disputing my claims,” Mulder fires right back, and Scully grins.

 

“No,” she agrees. “I’m not, am I?”

 

“So what was it?” asks Mulder, leaning back against the bench and popping a few more sunflower seeds. “Did you skip class? Smoke weed behind the building with the stoners?”

 

“No, no, nothing like that,” she says. “It was more...I don’t know. Have you ever respected someone with your entire being, and at the same time, wanted to do everything you can to defy them?” Mulder feels like this question is rhetorical, so he waits for her to continue. “When I was younger, my father and I were close, and I would fight and fight for his approval. There was this integral part of me that just could not fathom disappointing him...”

 

“But?”

 

“But there was another part of me that saw having this authoritative, Naval Officer father as a challenge. And, sometimes, that part of me would win out, and I’d find myself on the roof in the middle of the night smoking my mother’s cigarettes, or I’d tell him I was spending the night at a friend’s to work on a paper, when really I’d be playing drunken truth or dare at a college party me and some girls snuck into. That sort of thing.”

 

“He ever catch you?” asks Mulder, lapping up every miniscule part of this information.

 

“Oh God, no,” says Scully. “To this day, I’m pretty sure my father thinks the worst thing I’ve ever done to defy him is pierce my nose.”

 

“And what really was the worst thing you’ve done to defy him?” Scully thinks for a minute, and then laughs, ducking her head. “What is it?” asks Mulder, grinning curiously.

 

“I lost my virginity in the back of his Camaro when he was gone on a field mission,” she says.

 

“You’re fucking with me,” says Mulder, laughing, and she shakes her head.

 

“I’m dead serious. I was so afraid he’d be able to, I don’t know, smell it or something when he got back, that every day until he got home I’d sneak out at night after my mom had gone to bed and open the doors to air it out.”

 

“That is hilarious,” Mulder says. “Was the sex worth it?”

 

“Oh God no,” Scully says immediately. “I didn’t even like the guy. I think I just enjoyed his attention, but he was definitely on the path to growing up to be a Tom Colton type.”

 

“Let me guess, that means his sexual technique was a two-pump-dump, followed by a self-satisfied smile and a, ‘did you get there, babe?””

 

“Pfffffft,” is the the noise that comes from Scully’s mouth, as she falls forward so that her head is in her lap, her shoulder’s shaking in silent laughter. Despite the cold, Mulder feels a warm flush through his body at having caused it. When she regains control, she sits up and says, “pretty much that exactly, yes.”

 

“I can’t give the guy too much shit,” Mulder says, deciding to save Scully the awkward question that was bound to come next (‘so, since everyone seems to hate you, are you still a virgin?’). “My first time, I took like, ten minutes to even manage to get inside, and then I guess I slipped out without even noticing, and I finished on her mother’s couch cushion.”

 

Scully, who was still catching her breath, fell into another fit of giggles, and it’s a beautiful sound.

 

“That’s horrible,” she says in a wheezy voice.

 

“Yeah, she was furious. We had to figure out how to get semen out of upholstery and everything.”

 

“High school?” she asks.

 

“Of course. We were like, sixteen. Her name was Diana, and we met in our school’s UFO club.”

 

“Your school had a UFO club?”

 

“Well, I should probably clarify. We actually met in the school’s sci-fi club, and then _founded_ the school’s UFO club.”

 

“How many members?”

 

“Well, you had to have at least four to be an official club, so it was me, her, this dumb kid named Jeffrey who needed an elective, but joined too late so all the other clubs were full, and then a friend of Diana’s who only joined so she could skip gym on Tuesdays.”

 

Mulder waits patiently for Scully’s new wave of giggles to subside.

 

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding the least bit sorry, and Mulder doesn’t care.

 

“I feel like I should clarify that we did eventually get better at the naked pretzel.”

 

“I’m sure you’re great at the naked pretzel, Mulder,” says Scully, and Mulder quickly shoves the, ‘wanna see for yourself?’ that pops into his head, down into his mental abyss. There is an awkward silence that follows while Mulder represses his feelings, and while Scully seems to realize she’s said something suggestive.

 

“Mulder,” Scully says suddenly, breaking the tension and pointing to his fishing pole. “Your line.”

 

Mulder looks to see the tip of his pole tugging forward slightly.

 

“That a fish?” he asks.

 

“Could be. Give it a tug.”

 

And Mulder is about to do just that, when suddenly, his line begins unravelling at lightening speed, and before he can even tighten his grip on his pole, it flies right out of his hand and into the water. He and Scully exchange a dumbfounded look, Mulder’s hands, now empty, still out in front of him.

 

“I take it that wasn’t supposed to happen?” he asks, and Scully shakes her head slowly.

 

“What the fu—” she starts, but before she can get the whole sentence out, the entire boat lurches violently, as though it went over a tremendous wave, causing Mulder and Scully to fling backwards hard against the bench, lake water splashing up onto the boat by their feet. Except that there are no waves. The water is still.

 

“The Hell was that?” Mulder calls over to Benny and Earl, who are holding onto the railing on the other side of the boat as though they had almost been thrown overboard. When they say nothing, Mulder asks, “was that what happened last time you were out here?”

 

Earl starts nodding vigorously, while Benny just looks terrified, and Mulder steps over the bench to go head towards them, when the boat lurches again, this time to the other side, and even more violently. Benny and Earl are flung forward, and Mulder crashes to the ground, and he’s trying to assess how badly he’s bashed his head against the bench when he hears Scully scream, and he looks up just in time to see her hit the bars and topple right over them, into the water.

 

He doesn’t think. Without a single conscious thought, he’s on his feet and diving over the side of the boat.

 

The water hits him like a million needles on his skin. It’s not freezing, but it’s close, and it takes him a minute to gather his bearings. He starts kicking his feet and moving his arms, struggling to keep his head above water.

 

“Scully!” he yells through mouthfuls of dirty lake. “Scullayyy!”

 

“Mulder!” comes Scully’s reply nearby, and he kicks himself towards the sound and sees her bobbing in the water, bobbing up and down, spitting and gurgling, trying to breathe. He turns into an olympic swimmer, swimming faster than he ever has in his life, until he gets ahold of her hand.

 

“Scully,” he says once he’s pulled her to him, kicking hard to keep them both afloat. “Scully, we have to swim to the edge of the boat.”

 

She doesn’t say anything, but nods a single nod and helps him puppy paddle to the boat where Benny and Earl are with a lifesaver.

 

“Catch this!” Earl says, throwing it into the water.

 

“Can you grab it?” Mulder asks Scully, his hands full, gripping her around the waist. She reaches out and with the very tip of her fingers, drags the lifesaver towards them.

 

“Okay, now you grab on and go first,” he tells her.

 

“We’ll go together,” she objects.

 

“They’ll get me next, but it’ll be easier for them to pull us out one by one.”

 

He lets go of her waist, and she gives him a worried look while Benny and Earl pull her up and onto the deck. While they’re pulling her, he feels something brush against the bottom of his feet. He glances around him, his eyes adjusted to the dark, but not enough to make out anything but a vague shadow around him, stretching for nearly twenty feet. It moves from underneath the boat, and starts to move away. The lifesaver plops in the water beside him, but he doesn’t grab it.

 

“Take it, kid!” yells Benny.

 

“I see it!” Mulder yells back. “Bessie! It’s down here!”

 

“You’re gonna catch hypothermia if you stay in that water, don’t be stupid, grab the damn float.”

 

The shadow under the water is getting further away, and Mulder, with much reluctance, grabs hold of the lifesaver, and lets them pull him up.

 

—-

 

The two of them are down in the room below deck, out of the wettest of their clothes, and wrapped in Mulder’s thick blanket, pressed against each other for warmth. Mulder is torn between absolute elation at the situation, and absolute disappointment at losing his chance at catching the monster in the lake.

 

“You’d be surprised at how big some catfish can get if they aren’t taken out by predators,” Scully is saying, holding a thermos of hot coffee that Earl gave them.

 

“Do they get up to twenty feet long?” asks Mulder.

 

“You were amped on adrenaline and freezing cold, you don’t know what you saw.”

 

“Yes I do, Scully.” He shakes his head. “If you had seen it…” He’s about to say more, but Scully shivers beside him, and he sighs. “How you doing?” he asks.

 

“Cold,” Scully says, giving a humorless laugh. “You certainly get me into some interesting scenarios.”

 

Man with a gun. Stranded car. Crashed funeral. Hacked computer accounts. Visiting a stranger dying of cancer in the hospital. He couldn’t disagree with her assessment.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling guilty.

 

“Oh don’t be,” says Scully. “You may be completely ridiculous, but life certainly hasn’t been dull since I met you.”

 

“Is that a good thing?” asks Mulder, feeling a bit vulnerable, remembering how tenuous their relationship had been only a day before. “Some people prefer dull.”

 

“I don’t,” Scully says, but she says it to her coffee cup with her eyebrows furrowed.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

She shakes her head. “I like spending time with you,” she says. “You’re a good person, you know that? One of the best, probably. I hope you don’t listen to the people who try to tell you that you aren’t. You’re too gifted to take the words of idiots to heart.”

 

Mulder isn’t sure where this is coming from, and he’d feel flattered if she didn’t sound so sad about these declarations. Her hair is damp and clumped together, and she’s back to looking tiny now that her figure isn’t covered by layers of clothes. But instead of commanding the room with her mere presence, her disposition seems to match her size. She seems small. She seems fragile. Mulder doesn’t know why.

 

“I don’t know,” he says. “Tom Colton does make some pretty compelling points. ‘Hey Spooky,’” he imitates. “‘You’re a freak.’”

 

Scully doesn’t smile. Instead, she looks up at him and stares him straight in the eye. They sit like that, in total silence, for nearly a minute, before she leans in and presses her lips gently against his.

 

His heart skips about twelve beats at the mere brush of her mouth on his, and he lifts a hand to cup her cheek and kiss her harder, but she pulls away, her eyes glistening.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t.”

 

Baffled, stomach dropping, Mulder jokes humorlessly, “boyfriend back home or something?”

 

Scully smiles sadly.

  
“If only it were that simple.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for explicit sexual content -thumbs up emoji-

The ride home is almost entirely silent. Their moment below deck followed them to the car and now loiters heavily in the air, and Mulder can hardly focus on the road, trying to make sense of it all. Try as he might, Dana Scully, he’s beginning to conclude, may actually be unsolvable. 

 

She sits in her spot in the passenger seat. She doesn’t sleep, as he expects her to, and instead, chews absently on her thumb nail, staring out the window, as the sky gets darker and darker the closer they get to home. A lot has happened between sunup and sundown, and whatever she’s thinking about it is, unsurprisingly, a mystery to Mulder, who can think of nothing but the feel of her lips, and the stark juxtaposition of their absence. 

 

He’s starting to wonder if he should just finally concede defeat; let her off at her dorm and then let her be. He thinks she’s probably everything he’s ever wanted, but the line he treads with her is so thin that he’s always at risk of tripping over, and the anxiety over it is driving him mad. His stomach is full of shuttering shame butterflies, and he has no idea how she managed to make him feel guilty when  _ she’s _ the one who kissed  _ him _ .

 

He isn’t angry, that’s not the right adjective. She has a right to privacy, and he’d be the first to admit that he’s a lot to take on, but the uncertainty may actually break him. 

 

It isn’t just the kissing. 

 

Does he want to be able to kiss her senseless? He wouldn’t mind it. Does he want to kiss her until she’s forgotten the lips of anyone else she’s ever swapped saliva with? Sure, that’d be an accurate assessment, but that isn’t  _ it _ . It never was. At the end of the day, it’s trust. He’s entrusted on a woman he’s known for a handful of weeks, secrets he’s kept from people he’s known for years, and he wants her to feel that comfortable with him. Sex is something, but trust is everything, and he aches for her to trust him. Not with the small stuff, like late night excursions looking for mysteries, but for the big stuff; the intangible monsters that get shoved under the bed down deep in the subconscious. 

 

“You can tell me,” he says to her. She doesn’t take her eyes off the trees and the mile markers flying past her on the side of the highway. 

 

“Tell you what?” she says flatly.

 

“Anything.”

 

Mulder hazards a glance in her direction, and in her dim reflection on the glass he can see her eyebrows knit together as she worries a trench into her bottom lip.

 

A beat of silence.

 

Two.

 

“I don’t trust anyone in this world more than I trust you, Mulder.”

 

It should sound like a love confession, but it feels empty instead.

 

“Prove it, then,” he says, gripping his fingers hard around the steering wheel. “Tell me what’s wrong.” 

 

He waits for her to reply, but nothing comes from her mouth but a slow, sad exhale, fogging a small patch of the passenger side window, and he doesn’t ask again.

 

—-

 

He pulls up to her dormitory, exhaustion seeping into every muscle, and his eyes dry and stinging along the edges. 

 

“Home sweet home,” he says, and he knows he sounds unhappy, but he doesn’t care. Scully wrings her hands in her lap. She undoes them and opens her door but doesn’t make to leave. “What is it?” Mulder asks, barely a tone away from annoyed, and Scully must hear it in his voice, because she finally looks up to him and smiles a small, apologetic smile.

 

“You’re tired,” she says, voice quiet. “And you should sleep. But we should talk first. We need to talk first. I owe it to you.” 

 

Mulder stares at her. She swallows thickly and closes her door with a slam. 

 

“Let’s go to your dorm,” she says, and Mulder nods before he even fully processes it, fumbling with his gear shift, and driving them away. 

 

He parks his car in the closest student lot, but it’s still a bit of a trek, and Scully rubs her arms, wincing, several layers of her clothes sitting in the back of his seat sopping wet. He pulls his damp hoodie over his head, the wind biting at his bare arms, and holds it out to her. She hesitates.

 

“You’ll freeze.”

 

“You’ll freeze faster, take it,” he says. Although the words are kind, he’s missing his usual jovial charm, and Scully seems to think better of arguing, taking it without another complaint, and tugging it over her small frame. It hangs on her like a dress, going down to her knees, and in a better situation, Mulder would laugh. Instead, they walk towards his dorm, cutting through a dead flower bed, full of dark soil and a couple of ashen bushes. They get inside, tracking dirt with their boots, and climb the stairs to his room.

 

He holds the door open for her, and follows in after, not missing the way, face turned away from him, her shoulders tense as he closes it behind them. For the first time, Mulder entertains the idea that whatever Scully has to tell him could be bad. Like, truly bad, and that maybe she isn’t just private, but that whatever secret she’s been keeping may actually be  _ worth _ keeping. 

 

His belly hurts the way it did when he had to explain to his parents, “I don’t know what happened to her,” or when the paramedics approached him and his mother with solemn faces, saying, “the bullet wound pierced his heart, there was nothing we could do.” 

 

She doesn’t turn around right away. Instead, she stands in front of his favorite poster, lifting her hand and lightly tracing the outline of the blurred spaceship in the center.  “I give you shit for this,” she says, “but I sometimes think it would be nice.”

 

“What would?”

 

“To believe that the world is more than what’s in front of us. To have the every day be trivial in the scheme of the universe.” She drops her hand like dead weight and turns to face Mulder, her eyes glistening. “You were an accident, you know that?”

 

“That’s what my parents always said,” he jokes dryly, and she smiles, sad and small.

 

“That’s not what I mean. I mean...” She stares up at the dorm room ceiling that has a crack in the tile and big, bracing florescent lights, and searches for the words. “I mean I never meant to get in this deep with you.” She takes in a shaky breath and finds his eyes again. “I’ve never had that many friends, did you know that?”

 

“I’m not sure I know much of anything about you,” Mulder says, shocked by his honesty, and he expects her to be taken aback by his rudeness, but instead she just nods. ‘That’s fair,’ her face says. She continues,

 

“It wasn’t that people didn’t like me, or that I didn’t like people. I got along with everyone just fine, and it wasn’t even that I changed schools whenever my dad got new orders. I just...I wasn’t… interested in them. Kids my age were doing things that were perfectly normal for them, you know, gossiping, and having slumber parties where they’d play silly games and talk about boys, and I never judged them for it, but it never interested me. I liked playing with my toy chemistry set and reading medical journals and true crime novels, and I guess I’ve always felt a little on the outskirts. 

 

“I wasn’t lonely. I had my brothers, and my sister when my brothers decided I was too much of a girl to play with them, and I was happy. That’s pretty rare, isn’t it? To be able to say that your childhood was happy? There were...bumps, you could say, along the road, but overall? I was happy.”

 

She smiles somewhat wistfully, as though remembering herself as a girl, sitting by herself leafing through med journals she’d found at the library. She runs her fingers through her hair, which has dried messy and a bit tangled, and shakes her head.

 

“I miss that,” she says. “I miss the simplicity of it.”

 

“I don’t—” Mulder starts, but she holds up a hand.

 

“I’m being tangential, my apologies, it’s just that, well, this is harder than I expected it to be, and I already expected it to be hard.” Mulder’s stomach lurches without his consent, and she rambles on. “By all accounts, I’m the same type of person I was when I was a kid. The only difference now is that I have better access to the journals, and I’ve got real chemistry sets.

 

“And when I came to school this fall, even knowing everything that I did and knowing that I may be unrecognizable by the end of it, I at least was comforted by the fact that I wouldn’t be bringing anyone down with me.” Mulder is so far beyond lost that he doesn’t even interrupt for clarification, and she doesn’t stop to clarify. “And then you happened, Mulder, and that was something that I never accounted for.

 

“All you were ever supposed to be was a drunken conversation on the balcony at a house party; a blip on the radar. But you didn’t go away, and what’s worse is, I didn’t want you to. You meant... _ so _ much to me, in such a short period of time, that I didn’t care that I wasn’t being fair to you; that, in spite of everything I would have missed, I should have left you as a drunken memory.” 

 

“Scully,” says Mulder. “I don’t understand.” 

 

She takes another, even deeper breath, and let’s it go through lightly pursed lips.

 

“I’m sick,” she says. Simply. Factually. 

 

A beat.

 

“I don’t understand,” says Mulder again, because in his head ‘sick’ means weakened; fragile; frail. But Scully isn’t weak, fragile, or frail, and is, in fact, the antithesis of everything it means to be  _ sick _ . 

 

But she repeats herself as well, “I’m sick, Mulder,” with more force, seeing the way the wheels in his brain are stuck on the word. “Really sick.”

 

“I’m guessing you don’t mean the flu,” Mulder asks, and she smiles. Sad. Small.

 

“It’s cancer,” she says, still smiling, just a little, giving an absurd air of peace around the calamity that is this confession. “Brain cancer.”

 

There’s something about the word cancer that incites fear in a way other illnesses don’t. It’s not like it’s the only threat to the body—hell, a good virus can take a person down efficiently if it’s resilient—but cancer is scarier. Cancer is the body rebelling against itself, mutating and attacking. Maybe it’s scary because you can only destroy it at the risk of destroying yourself. Or, thinks Mulder, it’s just the hard C sound in the word that makes it threatening. He doesn’t particularly care about the reasons. He just knows that he’s afraid.

 

He keeps his face neutral and his voice level. “Is it...can you treat it?” 

 

Scully chews her bottom lip, like she’s deciding on the right words. “We’re going for honesty here, right? That’s what this is about?” she asks. Mulder nods because he can’t speak. She nods back, setting her jaw, and says, “Then, to be perfectly honest, the treatment I’m getting is only delaying the inevitable.” 

 

“The inevitable?”

 

“It’s terminal,” she says. “I’m dying.” 

 

Mulder read an essay once, of someone saying that no matter how much someone tries to explain how big space is, you are never going to truly understand. The expanse of space is just so much bigger than anything the human brain can fathom, and when Mulder read that essay, he tried to fathom it. He thought of lightyears and big bangs and particles expanding for billions of years; he thought until his head hurt, and in the end he knew that he still didn’t understand the magnitude of it all.

 

That’s how he feels now, processing the concept of Dana Scully dying. 

 

He’s only known she’s existed in this world for a few weeks, but to picture a world without her is to fully fathom the expanse of space: It can’t be done.

 

“I don’t accept that,” he says, because he doesn’t. He can’t. To his surprise, she laughs a little, her eyes soft.

 

“You believe in so much,” she explains. “Your mind is so open to every possibility, but you can’t accept scientific fact? Mulder, hear me when I say that for every fantastic thing you believe, I am as certain of this as you have ever been.” 

 

Mulder doesn’t know how to reply to that. Scully, with her physics and figures, is smarter than him, so much smarter, but she has to be wrong about this. She has to, and he believes that with more certainty than he’s ever believed anything, as though his belief alone could cure her.

 

Scully takes his silence as an opportunity to add, “There’s more I should probably tell you.” 

 

“I don’t want more,” he says, feeling flooded enough already.

 

“I know, but I have to tell you, because it involves your case.”

 

He blinks. “Case?” 

 

“Whatever you want to call it. With Betsy. With Penny. The wild goose chase those faceless men have you running on.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

She swallows hard. “I haven’t...I haven’t been entirely truthful with you, and before I explain, please know that it was just because I was scared.” She waits for Mulder to say something, but he doesn’t have anything to say other than a broken record of ‘please tell me you’re joking,’ so she goes on. “Whatever killed Betsy and those other women, and whatever is killing Penny...I think that I’m a part of it.”

 

Five minutes ago, if you had asked Mulder if anything would ever blindside him more than the confession that Scully was dying of terminal brain cancer, he would say absolutely not. He’s not particularly pleased with being proven wrong.

 

“You remember how I was upset when we left the hospital after visiting Penny Northern?” asks Scully. He nods blankly; he wasn’t soon to forget. “That’s because...because, when I went into her room to talk to her, Penny recognized me.”

 

“Recognized you?” 

 

“She knew me, Mulder, and she knew about my cancer. And it was so overwhelming that I just stormed out. I should have told you about it then, but I was so confused, and scared, that I couldn’t, Mulder, I just couldn’t, and I’m sorry.”

 

“No, but I don’t understand,” says Mulder, clenching his eyes shut and shaking his head, as though trying to make all these pieces fall together into some semblance of an order. “But Betsy, and Penny, and all the others...they’re connected by more than just cancer.”

 

“Yes,” says Scully. “They are.”

 

“They were all abducted.”

 

Scully says nothing. Instead, she becomes fascinated with the skin around her thumb nail. Mulder can’t believe it.

 

“Scully?” 

 

She closes her eyes and won’t lift her head.

 

“I should have told you,” she says, and Mulder’s entire worldview tilts on its axis.

 

“You were abducted?” 

 

Her head snaps up, and suddenly she’s defensive. “It wasn’t any sort of supernatural occurrence,” she says defiantly. “It was a kidnapping. That’s all I’ve ever categorized it as, until recently, so please don’t feel like I was keeping something from you.”

 

“But…” Mulder has forgotten the entire English language. “What happened, then? What…? Just, what?”

 

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “I really don’t. I was twelve. I remember being thrown in the back of a trunk after school one day, and then it all goes blank. The man who originally took me was apprehended while I was still missing, so others were clearly involved, and when I was found I was really sick—like, ‘you should decide if you want to pull the plug or not,’ sick—but somehow I pulled through, I got a therapist, and I learned to cope. That’s it, I swear. If I thought it had to do with anything bigger I would have said something, believe me, if only to prevent it from happening to anyone else.”

 

She absently fiddles with the gold cross hanging around her neck, furrowing her brow. “Mulder, I went to the Lone Gunmen’s house.”

 

“What?” says Mulder, getting whiplash from all the blindsiding. 

 

“After Penny. I shouldn’t have gone behind your back, but I wanted to have answers before I approached you. Don’t get mad at them, they only kept my secret because I promised them I’d tell you, plus I’m sure they felt bad because I’m dying.” Mulder winces at how easily she says, ‘dying.’ “But Mulder, my name? It’s in a locked file, just like the others.” 

 

Mulder can’t take it anymore. He plops down to the floor in what can only be described as a controlled fall, and buries his face in his knees, arms gripping his hair tightly while he tries to sort everything out. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbles, his voice muffled. 

 

“Yeah,” says Scully, and her voice is closer than he expects. He lifts his head to find her down on the floor in front of him. She sits back on her heels, and reaches for his hand. He lets her take it, and she laces her fingers through his, rubbing her thumb against his palm. “I’m sorry,” she says.

 

“You don’t need to apologize,” Mulder says absently.

 

“I do, though. I never should have let this happen.”

 

By  _ this _ Mulder knows she means whatever is happening between them. She means their adventures in forests and lakes. She means the kiss below deck, and whatever is causing it to feel like there are little electrical sparks erupting between their grasped hands. She means she should have never let the best parts of his life happen, and he can’t believe someone so smart could be so dense.

 

“No,” he says, gripping her hand tightly, stilling her wandering thumb. “Don’t do that.”

 

“Do what?” she asks, staring at their joined hands with a vacant expression.

 

“Apologise for being in my life.”

 

“You’d be better—” she starts, but Mulder cuts her right off.

 

“No,” he says again, taking her other hand now. “Sick or not sick, conspiracy or none, my life is only better with you in it.” 

 

“Mulder,” she says breathily, and Mulder realizes that until now she’s been speaking calmly and straightforward, as though people announce their terminal illness every damn day and why should it be a big deal for her? But now, as she says his name with her hands in his, her knees bruising on the hard, tile floor, emotion bleeds through for the first time.

 

“I never had friends, either, you know, not really,” he says. “But, and I know this will be hard to believe, it  _ was _ because people didn’t like me much. But I didn’t care. Like you, I had my interests, and an occasional believer, to befriend or sleep with and sometimes even love, to keep me sane. But you’re different. You’re contrary to every rule I’ve ever made about people. Don’t care what they think, don’t trust them too much, don’t get too attached—I’ve fucked up every single one, and it has been entirely worth it, Scully. One hundred percent worth it.”

 

Tears slide down her face, not having her hands to brush them away, and she looks up at him with a watery gaze. 

 

“This sucks,” she says, and Mulder has to laugh.

 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It sucks.”

 

“What do we do now?” 

 

Mulder shrugs. “That’s up to you. Do we start with trying to find the means to break into that secret file to start unraveling this conspiracy, or do we start with finding a cure, because I know you said it’s inevitable, but I meant when I said I won’t accept it, Scully, I swear. I’m not going to give up until we’ve exhausted every possible avenue.”

 

She gives him the look she gives when he says something endearing but preposterous. “Honestly, right now I don’t want to do anything about cancer or conspiracies or cures,” she says.

 

“The Three Cs,” says Mulder, and she smiles. He lets go of one of her hands in order to push a strand of lake water-stained hair back behind her ear. She leans her head into his touch and sighs. “What do you want to do, then?” he asks softly. She looks him in the eye.

 

“We could fuck?” she says.

 

Blindsided once again. Mulder’s neck is going to ache tomorrow.

 

“B-beg pardon?” he says, and he can’t believe that he is such a dork that he actually, genuinely stutters. 

 

Scully shrugs like she didn’t just manage to tonally shift an entire conversation so drastically he went from grief to nervously horny in two seconds flat.

 

“Intercourse,” she says, unhelpfully. “Coitus. The naked pretzel.  _ Boning _ .”   

 

“Like,” Mulder swallows hard. “Like, right now?”

 

“Eat, drink, and be mary, for tomorrow we may die,” says Scully, gaze suddenly charged, and Mulder isn’t exactly sure how a joke about her impending death could give him an erection, and yet.

 

“Are you trying to seduce me with idioms?” he asks, sounding more confident than he feels. “Scully, life’s too short to idly throw around cliches.”

 

She grins. “Actions speak louder than words,” she says, and all the blood in Mulder’s body goes to his cock. What a turn, he thinks, what a complete, 180 turn.

 

“Well,” he says unconsciously tightening his grip on her hand even more. “Ball’s in your court.”

 

She ponders like she’s trying to think of another relevant idiom, then she grins, licks her lips, and leans in close so her mouth is an inch from his ear, and he can feel her breath, hot and moist, on his skin. “Get mine, get yours,” she whispers, and that, not to be cliche, is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Mulder tears his hand from hers, and grabs her by the shoulders. He holds her a hair’s width away, and takes just a second to admire her—she’s tired, with bags under her eyes and flecks of mud on her cheeks, and she’s the most beautiful thing Mulder has ever seen. He kisses her hard.

 

And she kisses right back, and just like that, they’re kissing each other, all the feelings they don’t know how to say being confessed in the colliding of their lips. Mulder has never before understood the romanticization of kissing, likening it to fireworks and explosions, but now he realizes that he never understood it because he hasn’t been kissing Dana Scully.

 

Ask me now, he thinks, to fathom how expansive the Universe is, and I’ll be able to tell you in exact detail, because I just saw the Big Bang happen right before my eyes.

 

Scully takes her arms and wraps them tightly around his torso, pressing herself up against his chest, and everything is lips and tongue and breasts and arms. 

 

“I smell like lake,” she says, pulling away, looking up at him breathlessly, seeming suddenly self-conscious. Her fingers thrum an arrhythmic beat along his spine. “I haven’t brushed my teeth, or washed my hair, or—”

 

Mulder cuts her off with a brief but hard kiss, and cups her face. He’s not sure how she could be doubting her own perfection when he’s pretty sure he’s looking at her like Heaven personified. 

 

“I don’t care,” Mulder says. “I only care that you want this to be happening. Do you? It’s okay if you don’t.”

 

“It was my suggestion, remember?” says Scully. Mulder would not soon forget.

 

“Just making sure,” he says, tracing her jawline with the pads of his thumbs. “There’s a lot of emotion going on in here. It’s easy to get swept up and go too far, and I get it if that’s what’s happening.”

 

“It’s not,” Scully says, and kisses him for a long, wet moment to convince him. “I just… I’m nervous?” She looks confused by this revelation. “Why am I nervous?” she asks him. “I’ve never been nervous in this type of situation before.”

 

“I’m nervous too,” Mulder admits. “I’m nervous because this feels kind of important. Not to be presumptuous, but maybe that’s why you are too.”

 

“Yeah,” she says distantly, searching Mulder’s face. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

 

“Listen, we’re covered in lake water, haven’t properly slept in nearly two days, you’ve got cancer, and our whole world is a goddamned conspiracy. Let’s...let’s just have sex?” Mulder is aghast at his own forwardness, but Scully’s shoulders visibly relax.

 

“Yes,” she says. “Exactly, yes.” 

 

“Not here though. My knees hurt in sympathy of yours,” Mulder says, getting to his feet, and helping Scully to hers. She winces as she straightens out the kinks in her legs. They both turn to look at Mulder’s lofted, twin-sized bed.

 

“If you don’t get down and dirty in a shitty, lofted dorm bed at least once during your college career, was the whole experience even worth it?” Scully asks, and Mulder laughs, a bit hysterically, still a bit anxious.

 

“At least it’s not the back of my car,” he says as Scully starts climbing up the stairs. He follows close behind and gets a nice view. 

 

“Yeah, if we ever screw in a car, let’s make it mine, yours would warrant a chiropractor visit afterwards.”

 

Mulder has no smart marks to quip back at her because he’s too hung up on the concept of doing this more than once. 

 

They reach the top of the bed, and Scully is lying on her back, her head on his pillow, and he thinks about finding strands of her hairs later on, long after she’s left. Left his room, he clarifies to himself, not this life. 

 

The tiny space makes them touch without even trying. Mulder has his legs splayed on either side of her, straddling her waist, and she stares up at him with a grin.

 

“Why do I feel like I’ve never done this before?” asks Mulder. The answer is, of course, because he hasn’t. Not with her. 

 

“Well, it usually starts with something like this,” says Scully, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it up. He helps her along, tugging it off over his head, and she tosses it carelessly over the side, onto the ground.

 

“Huh,” she says, taking in his bare chest. He flushes under the scrutiny.

 

“What?” he asks.

 

She flashes him another spectacular grin. Her hand lightly traces the outline of his abs. He’s got a pretty solid four pack, and a six pack if he’s not eaten all day and just got back from the gym. “Not so thin and lanky after all, huh, Spooky?” she asks in a deep and sensual voice, and Mulder quickly amends a previous conviction: He never wants Dana Scully to call him by his student-body-appointed nickname,  _ unless she’s saying it like that _ .

 

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” he says.

 

“Unless it’s about aliens, lake monsters, or poltergeists,” amends Scully, leaning up to press kisses on his naked chest, and, shuttering, he decides right then that the score is a little unbalanced at the moment, and scoots down to the bottom of the bed to start working on the tie to her boot. 

 

“We’re getting mud in my bed,” he says, more as a fact than a concern, because really, he’s never cared about anything less. He tugs one boot off and tosses it over the side, and immediately starts on the second one.

 

“Stop picking muddy places to chase monsters, then,” says Scully, sitting up on her elbows and watching him work her shoelace. 

 

When both her boots are off, and he’s kicked off his own, Mulder fumbles with the button on her jeans. “I swear to God, I’m usually better at this,” he says in a pained voice after tugging them off swiftly fails miserably, and he begins pulling them off inch by inch.

 

“In your defense,” says Scully, helping him by lifting up her rear end and kicking them off her legs. “They are still a little wet from when your store brand Nessie got me thrown over the side of a boat.”

 

“So you’re admitting that there was a store brand Nessie, then?” he says, and before she can retort, he briefly abandons the task at hand to lean over and steal a kiss from her. “Say  _ wet _ again,” he whispers, and Scully laughs. 

 

“Wet,” she says. “From  _ falling overboard _ .”

 

“Sorry Scully, all I heard was that you’re wet,” says Mulder, and he finally gets her jeans pulled off. “Tada!” he says, holding up his victory.

 

“Good job, now get my leggings off.”

 

“Why the Hell,” Mulder says with mock agony, gripping the elastic of her black leggings, “must you wear so many layers?”

 

“You want me to be cold?” she asks. “Shame on you, Mulder, I could get sick.” At Mulder’s unamused glare, she laughs and says, “Sorry, are we not at the ‘joking about it’ stage yet?”

 

In response, Mulder pulls down her leggings, exposing her milky thighs, and leans down and nips at the smooth skin.

 

“Argh!” Scully squeals in a very un-Scullylike way. “Don’t start games you can’t win,” she warns, and Mulder isn’t entirely sure what these sorts of games entail, but he and his increasingly hardening hard-on are more than willing to find out.

 

He helps her out of her leggings, taking her thick, knitted socks with them, and rubs his hands up her legs slowly. She arches up into his touch, and he plants kisses on the insides of her thighs. He can smell her arousal, which in other women he had never found unpleasant, but in her he finds downright erotic. Without thinking about it, he buries his face in her crotch, breathing deeply, taking in nearly two day’s worth of her scent, and biting the fabric of her black, lace panties. The noise Scully makes somewhere above him is half giggle, half moan, and he lifts up to find her staring at him with a heaving chest, looking wild.

 

“Do you always wear panties like this on fishing trips?” Mulder asks, pulling and snapping the hem of them around her hips. She jerks a little.

 

“I need to do laundry,” she says. “Those were the only ones that were clean.” 

 

“Lucky me,” Mulder says.

 

“For Christ’s sake,” Scully says, but she blushes when she says it. 

 

“Can I…?” He nods indelicately towards the spot between her legs, and she laughs a little breathlessly.

 

“Not yet,” she says, sitting up, and reaching over to maneuver Mulder onto his back. His heart beats all the way into his throat as she wastes no time unfastening his belt, and sliding down his jeans to his knees, much more efficiently than he had with hers. His erection springs free in his boxers, and she very gently wraps a hand over it, and Mulder thinks that if this feels this good through fabric, he may be in for an embarrassing situation once she actually touches him, but he’s not about to tell her to stop. 

 

He watches her through hooded eyes as she very carefully pulls his boxers over his cock, as though unwrapping a very delicate gift. He gets off on her drinking in the look of him. He wonders, given how clinically she analyzes everything, how she analyzes him. Seven inches if we’re being generous, six and a half if we’re being truthful. Does he measure her in the metric system, he wonders absurdly, since the science she does is in centimeters, and liters, and kilometers. What does she think when she sees the faded line of his circumcision scar? Is she for or against it, or has she guessed his Jewish heritage, and sees the removal of skin as a tangibility of religious faith?

 

She pulls his boxers down to his knees as well, and leans down, glancing up and smirking. She kisses around him, pressing her lips on sensitive flesh, and he growls in the back of his throat. She brushes her mouth just barely over the skin of his sack, and his hand unconsciously flies to her head and wraps in her hair. She hovers over his length, breath exhaling onto him, and then she pulls away. Mulder lets out an embarrassing whine and she laughs.

 

She crawls up towards him and says quietly, “That’s for biting me.”

 

“I concede that I bit you for good reason,” Mulder says, struggling not to thrust himself against her body that is so close to him.

 

“Say you’re sorry,” she says. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately.

 

“How do I know you mean it?” 

 

In lieu of a response, Mulder reaches over and all but rips the hoodie he lent her earlier, along with the shirt underneath, right off her body in one fell swoop. He crushes his mouth to hers before she can say anything, and works the clasp of her bra like an expert even though he isn’t, hoping that feigning confidence will help him not make a fool of himself. 

 

To his delight, the bra comes undone after only a few seconds of fumbling, and without breaking the kiss, he slides her bra down her arms so she’s just as bare chested as he. 

 

He tears his mouth from hers, and moves down to suck meaningfully on a taut nipple, and she sucks in a sharp intake of breath at the sudden sensation. He lets his tongue play, seeing what causes her to make the most noise. “I mean it,” he says as he switches sides, sucking, and then daring to bite just a little bit, and she gasps.

 

“Mulder,” she says in a way he couldn’t even have imagined her saying his name.

 

“Still don’t like being bitten?” he asks against her breast, and marvels at the way it jiggles when she laughs. 

 

He pulls away to take a better look, and just drinks in the sight of Scully, topless, nipples sucked red and raw, hair looking like she’s already been sexed. “Has anyone told you,” he says, very pointedly staring at her breasts, because for once he’s actually allowed to, “that you are the most beautiful woman on the planet?”

 

“Tom Colton once told me I was the most bangable babe on campus,” Scully says, petting his hair absentmindedly. “Does that count?”

 

“No,” he says, looking up to meet her eye. “So I’ll tell you now. You’re the most beautiful woman on the planet.”

 

Her cheeks go so red that they match her hair. “Shut up, Mulder,” she says, and before he can profess anything else, he shoves him back against the mattress, and slides back down to his waist, where she takes him in her mouth without a second’s hesitation.

 

“Jesus,” he says, surprised, gripping the side of the mattress, but Scully doesn’t seem deterred. If anything, she’s encouraged, pressing the width of her tongue along his length, and taking him in all the way to the base without so much of a cough. It’s hard to keep his eyes open, but he has to watch, because seeing Scully with her mouth around him ranks among the best things he’s ever seen in his life, and he’s pretty sure he’s sighted UFOs. 

 

“Scully,” he says after a few minutes of this, a tightening starting to happen in his balls. “Scullyscullyscully, you gotta stop if you want to keep this going longer than five minutes.”

 

She pulls away with an obscene pop, and he amends his previous thought, because Scully with swollen lips from nearly sucking him dry is the actual best thing he’s seen. 

 

“What next?” she asks, catching her breath, pushing her hair back behind her ears again. 

 

“Is there,” Mulder says slowly, “any way to elegantly say the words, ‘sit on my face?’” 

 

Scully actually bursts out laughing, falling forward, forehead on his stomach. She laughs silently for a moment, her shoulders shaking, before sitting back up. “This whole thing is absurd,” she says. 

 

“Yeah. Good, though?” He hates that he sounds so self-conscious, but she just smiles and nods.

 

“Good, though,” she agrees, leaning up to kiss him, and as he tastes himself on her tongue, he works her panties down her thighs. She sits up, smirks, and slides them the rest of the way off. He pushes her towards him to indicate that he was not actually kidding about that face sitting thing, and although she lets out a small, “oh my God,” she crawls up, a little awkwardly on the small bed, until she’s straddling his face. 

 

“This is the best view,” Mulder says, admiring her from below, and she slaps him playfully on the head, balancing herself on the wall with her other hand. 

 

He takes hold of her hips, and leans up, starting with light kisses along her folds. He moves one hand down and slides it inside her easily, where she’s warm and tense, and he licks her from the start of her opening, up to her clit, and Scully cries out as he encircles her most sensitive flesh. 

 

He read once that to perform mind blowing cunnilingus, one should write the alphabet with their tongue. He takes it a step further, and writes words of adoration. Words like ‘trust,’ and ‘beauty,’ and even ‘love.’ Everything he wants her to know but is too scared to say, he writes with his tongue, until he runs out of proclamations and settles instead into a steady rhythm between the tracing of his tongue and movement of his finger, and her noises get more frantic, until she’s crying out, pounding the wall with her palm. 

 

“Jesus,” she says when she comes down. She heaves a few more breaths before scooting back and leaning down to kiss him, the two of them swapping each other’s flavors into each other’s mouths. 

 

“I want to be inside you,” says Mulder against her mouth. “Can I do that?”

 

“Of course,” she says. “Of course.” 

 

She slides down further, so that she’s right above his erection, and she knows what she’s about to do, and hates that he has to stop her.

 

“Wait,” he says. “Wait, condoms, they’re down in my desk.” He looks through the railing on his bed, down at his desk that seems so very, very far away.

 

“Uh,” Scully says. “Well, I can definitely grab them if that makes you more comfortable, but I, and let’s not get into this right now, but I should tell you that I can’t, um, get pregnant.” 

 

“What?” Mulder asks, not sure if having all the blood in his brain now residing in his cock is making him stupid, or if she really is hard to understand.

 

“What I’m saying is that I am both clean and sterile, and assuming that you are also clean, we don’t have to...you know...use a condom, if you don’t want to.”

 

“Don’t have to…” he trails off. “Uh, yeah, sure, that’s fine. Cool.” He tries and fails to keep the excitement out of his voice, and Scully rolls her eyes at him, but he’s really not that sorry. Safe sex is important, but experiencing every inch of Dana Scully with nothing between the two of them is something to truly be treasured. 

 

There’s a moment of awkward silence while they stare at each other, trying to decide who should make the first move, but Scully breaks it by giving herself one solid shake of the head, and then pushing down into him. 

 

She’s wet enough from her orgasm that he slides right in, and he has to actually grab her by the hips to still her, the feeling of her bare around him is so good. 

 

“I am going to tell you right now,” he says through a clenched jaw, “that I am not going to last long. Please don’t judge me.”

 

“I never would,” Scully says, and he’s surprised by her genuineness, and he opens his eyes to find her full of such wonder and adoration that he has to think, has he ever been looked at with such love? Does she love him?

 

He slowly lets his hands drop to his sides, and she begins to move, quickly picking up momentum, riding him with her hips moving in a perfect rhythm and her breasts bouncing just above his face. He reaches up and takes one in his mouth and she makes filthy noises, her fingers on one hand holding onto the edge of the mattress for dear life, and the fingers on the other digging into his shoulder.

 

True to his word, his orgasm begins to build not long after, and buries his face in the crook of her neck, her hair in his mouth, his string of curse words on her skin.

 

He comes, hard and deep inside of her, and is faintly aware of her petting his hair as his whole body shudders like an earthquake aftershock. And through his ecstasy, he can’t help but think, how in the Hell is he ever supposed to live without this woman? 

 

He vows, once again, as Scully pulls herself off of him and lets him gather her into his arms, that he will not let her die; not this young, and not like this, when they have so many more adventures to go on. 

 

There’s still an entire world for them to see.

 

——

 

Scully lays on her side, Mulder’s arm draped over her naked torso. The bed forces them to spoon, but it’s okay because she craves his touch like a drug. How peculiar, she thinks, to give this much of yourself to another.

 

He’s stuck here, now, she realizes with a bittersweetness, there’s no way she can get rid of him now. And it’s not that she wants to—it’s just that she’s scared. It’s possible she’s falling in love with him, and how cruel is it to make someone you love watch you die?

 

“What’s this on the back of your neck?” asks Mulder drowsily, a finger tracing a scar she knows is there in theory, but always forgets about.

 

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she says, but as she says it, she wonders how much of that is true. Whatever, she’s not going to talk about it now. It’s not that she’s keeping things from him again, it’s just that she’s so tired she’s not sure she can even get the words out in any coherent order anyway. It can wait until tomorrow. It all can.

 

As though reading her thoughts, he says, “You know, we are going to have to talk about it all. Not now, of course, but there are a lot of things we need to figure out.”

  
“I know,” Scully says, eyes already closed, mind already drifting. “And I have an idea of where we can begin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm a slow writer, but this story trucks on. thank you for those who are still reading, and thank you to those who are new. 
> 
> shameless self-advertising:  
> -check out my explicit first time fic "she tastes like candlelight" found on my ao3 page. it is part one of a three part series, but can be read as a standalone 
> 
> -say hi to me at alexkryceksbutt.tumblr.com or at severus-snape-is-a-butt-trumpet.tumbr.com if that also strikes ur fancy
> 
> have a nice day 
> 
> deuces -peace sign emoji-


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> explicit warning to remain in place just in general from now on. cw for very brief, but moderately vivid description of decomposition

Mulder wakes the next morning with a crick in his neck, his clothes still strewn about on the dormroom floor, and the dawning realization that last night was not, in fact, a dream. He’s lying on his side, back pressed uncomfortably against the bar of his bed that’s set against the wall, with his left arm draped over the still sleeping form of Dana Scully. She’s tucked in tightly against him, their bare legs tangled together on the small space. Beneath his hand he can feel the steady rise and fall of her breath, and the outline of her ribs against his palm, and he is struck with a potent bitter-sweetness, because this would be the most beautiful of moments, if not for Scully’s admission the night before.

 

Gently, Mulder moves his hand from her ribs to her head and pets her hair, thinking of the cancer inside her, trying to take her from him after he’s only just gotten her.

 

She stirs. Mulder lifts his hand, suddenly unsure of what their boundaries are meant to be now that it’s morning.

 

Scully makes a few cute, groggy sounds that make Mulder smile. She turns over to her other side to face him, a difficult task in their cramped position, and grins sleepily at him, and his heart blooms.

 

“Morning,” he says to her in a whisper.

 

“Mm, morning,” she says with a yawn. She rubs the sleep from her eyes. “Time is it?”

 

“No idea,” says Mulder. They’d slept like rocks, after hardly stopping to rest for two days straight, and now his sense of time is completely screwed. But he can see dim light filtering in from behind the shades of his window, and concludes that it is at least sometime after dawn. “How’d you sleep?” he asks her, not being able to help pushing a loose strand of hair from her face.

 

“Like the dead,” she says, and even though it’s just an expression, it reminds Mulder again of Scully’s illness. His eyes flicker to the space between her brow for only a moment, but she doesn’t miss it. Her smile becomes softer as she says, “Come now, it’s too early to worry about that.”

 

“Hard not to,” Mulder admits, still speaking quietly for no reason other than it’s early, and the lack of space between them seems incredibly intimate.

 

In response, Scully cups his cheek and kisses him chastely but firmly, and, just for the duration, Mulder’s worries manage to cease. She pulls away, and Mulder opens his eyes, not remembering having closed them.

 

“My mouth tastes like ass,” she says, and Mulder laughs.

 

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, and to prove his point, he captures her mouth again, totally apathetic to their mingling morning breath, or the fact that neither one of them has showered since taking nose dives into murky waters early the day prior, focused only on how perfectly Scully’s lips seem to fit against his.

 

He is, he realizes quite vividly, a total goner.

 

Scully lets out a contented sigh, and runs her fingers down his arm, causing goose pimples to form on his skin.

 

“We’ve got things we’ve got to discuss,” she tells him gently. “Things we need to do.”

 

“I thought you said it was too early for all that,” says Mulder, nuzzling his head against hers.

 

“It is,” she says. “Which is why I’m going to put my clothes back on and go to my dorm to get cleaned up—”

 

“—You’re welcome to share a shower with me if you’d like to save the water,” Mulder interjects against her neck.

 

“Male dorm only, Mulder. If they ever go co-ed, maybe you’ll get lucky,” she says, and even though it’s clearly said in jest, Mulder is just pathetic enough to be flattered at the implication that she would even pretend to entertain the idea. “After I’m done getting decent,” she continues, as if there had been no interruption, “I want us to go for a drive.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“We’re going to go visit Penny Northern again,” she says, and that stops Mulder in his tracks. He lifts his head up to stare at her.

 

“That didn’t go over so well last time,” he reminds her.

 

“Things have changed since last time,” she says sensibly. “And we’ve got to start somewhere. She’s still the best lead we got...And I don’t think we’ll have her much longer.”

 

Mulder searches her face for a long moment. “Are you sure?” he asks, and she nods. He’s not.

 

“But first,” she says, pulling herself into a sitting position. “A long, _long_ shower, and an even longer tooth brushing.”

 

Mulder is distracted, as he is suddenly reminded, as their shared blanket falls to her hips, that all their clothes are still in heaps on the floor. He tries not to stare as she lifts her arms high in an elongated stretch, so very, unabashedly _nude_. He adjusts his comforter over his waist discreetly.

 

She climbs over him and down the steps of her lofted bed, and he watches as she gathers her clothes and slips them on. There is something even more intimate, he thinks, about watching her make these simple, every day motions that he’d otherwise not get to see.

 

Once she’s dressed, and has run her hands through her hair a few times to try and make it at least somewhat presentable (a fairly futile task), she looks up to him and says, “I’ll text you in a bit when I’m ready to go.”

 

A thought flashes through Mulder’s mind, and he smirks.

 

“What?” she asks.

 

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s just, I’ve never had the pleasure of being someone’s reason for a Walk of Shame.”

 

Scully lets out a breathy laugh, and says, so genuinely it goes right to the center of Mulder’s heart,

 

“There’s not a damn thing about this that I’m ashamed of.”

 

—-

 

Scully returns from the shower feeling properly clean for the first time in what feels like an age, and finds that Monica has awoken. Scully had managed to sneak in and out of her dorm to get her bathroom things without having to face her, but it seems she’s not so lucky this time.

 

“So, you didn’t come home last night,” Monica says in her best impression of a concerned mother. She’s sat on her bed with her laptop, not even looking up.

 

“No,” Scully agrees. “I didn’t.”

 

“Sea monster hunting go longer than you thought?” asks Monica, clacking away on her keyboard.

 

“Um, not exactly,” says Scully, toweling her hair and slipping into a pair of leggings and pulling a skirt up over top of them, and tugs on a sweater. Monica’s eyes flicker her direction and she smirks. Scully rolls her eyes internally.

 

“So where’d you end up sleeping last night?”

 

Scully rolls her eyes externally this time at Monica’s, albeit accurate, suggestive tone.

 

“I slept with Mulder,” Scully says bluntly.

 

Monica looks at her fully now, a shit-eating grin on her face. “Was that double entendre purposeful, or…”

 

“Yes, alright?” Scully says, not seeing the sense in beating around the bush. She picks up her pill box and empties Sunday morning’s considerable dosage out into the palm of her hand, and wonders idly if there will be any significant consequences for missing last night’s medication. She doesn’t say anything else to Monica.

 

“No, no, no,” says Monica, throwing her legs over the side of the bed so she can sit eagerly at the edge. “You can’t just say that and then not give me the details.”

 

Scully sighs, tossing all her pills into her mouth, and swallowing them down in a single, practiced gulp with a glass of stale water from her desk. She acquiesces, not seeing a way out of this anyway. She goes and plops down on her own bed so they’re facing each other from across the room.

 

“It’s a long story,” she says. “Or, well, maybe it isn’t. It was an emotional and long couple days, but maybe a simple story.”

 

“Well, that’s pleasantly vague,” says Monica.

 

“I told him,” Scully says, and Monica’s eyebrows raise.

 

“Whoah.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“How’d he take it?”

 

Scully, who has shared with Monica the basics of her illness, but has conveniently left out the part about the alleged conspiracy that she may or may not be a part of, isn’t quite sure how to answer. She settles for, “As well as can be expected.”

 

“So did the sex happen before or after?”

 

“After. Sort of...uh, sort of as a result of, actually.”

 

Monica snorts. “Did you jump him so you wouldn’t have to talk about your feelings?”

 

Scully shrugs and doesn’t bother to deny it. The truth, as always, is more complicated than that, but again, Monica only has so many pieces to this particular puzzle.

 

“So what now?” Monica asks.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, are you two just boning, or are you, you know, together?”

 

Scully has not even considered it—hasn’t even truly taken the time to examine what any of her feelings towards Mulder even mean. She had figured that, in the scheme of everything, in the scheme of the not-so-distant future, that it wasn’t worth harping on. “I don’t know,” she says honestly. “I’m not sure I see the point.”

 

“Meaning?”

 

“Meaning I’m not going to be around that long. It seems somewhat cruel to get him involved in something that can only end in tragedy.”

 

“Oh, Dana,” Monica sighs. “Don’t think like that. Regardless of what happens, you can’t go around denying yourself life’s pleasures because you’re afraid you’re going to, I don’t know, destroy everything you touch. You deserve to be happy.”

 

“So does he,” she counters, and Monica deflates. There are several beats of intense silence, until she says,

 

“Okay, but here’s the important question.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“How was he in bed?”

 

A somewhat bashful grin grows on Scully’s face as she considers her answer.

 

“He asked me to sit on his face.”

 

Monica lets out a truly undignified squeal.

 

“And did you?” she asks urgently.

 

Scully merely shrugs.

 

“Oh. My. God,” Monica yells, and Scully can’t help but laugh.

 

—-

 

Mulder still isn’t convinced that this is a good idea.

 

“I’m still not convinced this is a good idea,” he says to Scully, who is in her spot in the passenger seat, the place where he’s come to expect her to be.

 

“I don’t understand your hesitation. Just last week you were ready to bust in and interrogate the woman like you were from the FBI.”

 

Mulder doesn’t mention that last time they visited Penny Northern, she decided not to speak to him for a week. “It’s different this time,” he says lamely.

 

“The only thing that’s different is that now you know I’m sick,” says Scully.

 

“That’s a pretty big difference,” he counters, and he feels her watching him. He takes his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her in his periphery, and explains, “Before it was just a mystery to solve, and now it’s suddenly personal.”

 

“We’ll just have to work to be objective, then.”

 

Easier said than done, he doesn’t say, but he thinks Scully hears him anyway.

 

A few miles pass by them, before Mulder works up the courage to ask a question that’s been on his mind since last night. “How long?” he says. Scully lets out a long stream of breath, clearly not needing clarification.

 

“I’m not sure,” she says quietly, picking at a loose strand on her fingerless gloves. “Not long.”

 

Mulder swallows thickly. “You said the doctors have you on treatment to…to give you some time.”

 

“I had scans done a couple weeks ago,” Scully says. “The treatments aren’t working. The cancer is getting worse.” At Mulder’s silence, Scully throws her head back against her seat and groans. “Don’t do that,” she says. “Not you.”

 

“Do what?” asks Mulder defensively.

 

“Pity me,” she says.

 

Mulder lets the words sink in, but they still don’t make sense. He makes an abrupt turn onto the shoulder of the highway, and hits the brake. He faces Scully, who is staring at him with her eyes wide, the only sound between them coming from the car idling.

 

“There’s nothing that could happen that would make me pity you,” he says so fiercely it surprises even him. “I’m worried about you, because I care about you, more than you can possibly understand, and losing you isn’t something I’m willing to accept.” He doesn’t say love, but he thinks it. “But I will never pity you. Not now. Not ever.”

 

Scully’s eyes glaze over and she stares at a point out the driver’s side window, just adjacent to Mulder. After a moment, she gives an almost imperceptible nod. Mulder regards her, for once not even caring if he’s crossed a line, because it was one that needed to be breached. He nods too, and lifts his foot off the brake, merging them back onto the highway, speeding toward the hospital, where Penny Northern, and, hopefully, some answers await.

 

—-

 

When they arrive at the hospital, a nurse is leaving Penny’s room, closing the door behind her. She startles when she notices the two of them hovering, and apologizes for not having seen them coming.

 

“How is she doing?” asks Mulder. The frown lines around the nurse’s mouth deepen.

 

“Not well,” she says. “It’s likely she won’t last the night.”

 

Mulder can’t bring himself to look at Scully, as the nurse excuses herself and continues on her rounds. Scully says nothing as she reaches for the door.

 

As prepared as Mulder tried to psych himself up to be, it turns out to not be nearly enough. The sight of Penny Northern literally takes his breath away. He finds he can’t see the frail, hollow woman before him without picturing Scully in a bed like this one, all skin, bone, and sickness, closer to death than to life.

 

But Scully said to remain objective, and so objective he will adamantly pretend to be. He swallows his discomfort, and channels Hollywood’s finest to act his way into something at least somewhat close to objectivity.

 

“Good evening, Ms. Northern,” he says, and his voice comes out steady despite his shaking core. Penny looks to see her visitors, and her gaze sails right past Mulder, and lands directly on Scully.

 

“Dana,” she says so weakly that it seems even her voice may snap in two at the slightest touch.

 

Mulder goes to say something else, but Scully puts a hand on his upper arm to still him, and she steps in front of him, approaching Penny’s bed the way someone would approach a startled stray cat. When she reaches the edge of the bed, she hesitates for a moment, before reaching down and gingerly placing Penny’s hand in her own.

 

“I’m sorry I reacted the way I did before,” Scully tells her. “But you frightened me.”

 

Penny watches Scully with adoration, and while Mulder can relate to the feeling, he doesn’t fully understand. Neither, he assumes, does Scully.

 

“I’m glad you came back,” Penny says, smiling with thin, white lips. She glances at Mulder, acknowledging his presence in the room for the first time. “Is this the boyfriend you spoke about?”

 

Mulder’s heart skips a beat until he remembers that was the cover they had been using when they came to the hospital the first time.

 

“This is Fox Mulder, Penny,” Scully says. “He’s trying to make sense of what’s happening to you...and me. Is it okay if we ask you some questions about...about the memories you seem to have that I don’t?”

 

Penny lingers on Mulder, not with wariness, but curiousity. She turns back to Scully with glassy eyes. “Did you remove your implant? The one in your neck?” she asks her. Mulder watches as Scully’s hand appears to instinctively fly up to the mark on the base of her neck he had examined in his bed. When she glances at Mulder, she looks nervous, and he nods at her that it’s okay.

 

“What do you mean by implant, Ms. Northern?” he asks for her.

 

“Penny,” she corrects him. “We all had them, all the women. The cancer formed after we had them removed.”

 

Mulder looks to Scully expectantly, and this time she nods, answering his unasked question, her hand still lingering on the tiny slit of a scar on her neck.

 

“It was sometime early last year,” Scully explains in a detached sort of way. “My family went on a trip. Usually we drove, but this time we flew, and when we went through security I set off the metal detector. They searched me high and low, but all they could find was that their wand went off when they waved it over my neck, and they ended up writing it off as a mechanical malfunction.” She swallows thickly. “A few weeks later, I had a routine checkup, and I offhandedly mentioned it, and they ran an x-ray just to see, and that’s when we found it. When they removed it no one could identify it or explain how it got there. With no other avenues to follow, there wasn’t much to do but let it slip from our minds...I got my diagnosis four months later.”

 

The plot thickens, and usually Mulder would be ecstatic, but instead he’s nauseated, and he’s furious, thinking of the faceless men or entities or whatever, who felt they had had agency over Dana Scully’s body, because he’s certain this is connected to her kidnapping—to all the kidnappings, or abductions, or whatever you wanted to call it. It had to be.

 

What else had they done to her that she has yet to discover?

 

“Does that mean the cancer was manufactured?” he asks.

 

He waits for Scully to say, “That’s impossible, Mulder, you can’t manufacture an illness like that,” but instead she looks to her shoes, seemingly just as lost as he, and Mulder finds that without having Scully as a voice of reason at his side, he feels tremendously like he’s free-falling. Is this a new development, or has he been falling his whole life and just hadn’t noticed it until someone came and gave him solid ground?

 

Penny’s eyes have closed, as though the effort of keeping them open is just too much for her now. She breathes like there’s a cinder block resting on her chest. Mulder doesn’t want to watch, and is also soaking up every detail, committing to memory what it looks like to succumb to cancer.

 

“The doctor,” Penny says in a voice that sounds like the wind. “My doctor—the one who treated all the others too?—he disappeared last week, a few days before you came to visit.”

 

“What was his name?” asks Mulder.

 

“Dr. Scanlon,” Penny breathes. She opens her eyes, just barely. “Do you think that matters? Do you think he’s part of it?”

 

Mulder shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he tells her honestly.

 

He watches her sinewy muscles strain as she clutches Scully’s hand tighter. “Dana,” and she says her name like a prayer—like a desperation. “You’ve got to get well.”

 

Scully is stone, the only giveaway being the slight, blink-and-you-miss-it, tremble that rattles through her lower jaw.

 

“I’m not sure I know how, Penny,” she says softly, but Penny shakes her head, almost imperceptibly.

 

“You’re too young,” she says. Every word sounds like it takes every last bit of energy she’s got. “You’ve got too much life left to experience.” Her eyes flicker to Mulder, as though is mere existence encompasses part of the life Scully is meant to survive long enough to live. She reaches her free hand to Scully’s face, cupping her cheek ungracefully with compromised motor skills, and tells her, “You can’t give up hope.”  

 

The hospital clock’s ticking bounces off the ugly white walls, as several seconds pass them by.

 

“I haven’t,” Scully says finally. “I won’t.”

 

Mulder doesn’t know if it’s a lie.

 

—-

 

Scully leaves the room after him, and comes to a stop beside where he’s sitting on a stiff, plastic chair, and she crosses her arms.

 

“I want to stay with her,” she says, and her face is tired.

 

“Scully—” he starts, but she cuts him off.

 

“Her sister had to go back to Baltimore, and won’t be back until late tonight. I don’t think she’s going to last that long. You can go, I don’t expect you to stay, but I can’t let her die alone.” Her jaw is set, but her eyes betray her, and Mulder wants to pull her to his chest and hold her there forever.

 

“I’ll stay,” he tells her. “Of course I’ll stay.”

 

“You really don’t have to,” she insists. “You’ve got class in the morning, and I can find my own way back to school. I’m not going to make you sit in there and watch her die, and I don’t know how long it’ll be—”

 

“Then I’ll sit in the waiting room. Or I’ll just stay right here. It doesn’t matter, Scully, I’m not letting you go through this alone.”

 

Scully bites the bottom of her lip, and finally nods.

 

“Alright,” she mutters.

 

“Do you want anything? A cup of coffee. A shot of morphine? A snack? I saw a guy with a broken leg downstairs with a bowl of jello. If I stole it he wouldn’t be able to chase me.”

 

He manages to get a small smile out of her.

 

“I’m okay,” she says, reaching out and giving his upper arm a tight squeeze.

 

“I’ll be right here,” he tells her, running a thumb along the curve of her jaw.

 

“I know you will be.”

 

She turns away and disappears back through the door.

 

“I’ll always be right here,” he whispers, but she’s already gone.

 

—-

 

She fell into a deep sleep over two hours ago, and Scully suspects she’s not ever going to again experience what it’s like to be awake.

 

Scully knows death as a clinical subject.

 

In one way, it’s a way to distant herself from it, but in another way, it feels like a devotion, knowing the process of dying so intricately and intrinsically.

 

The body’s processes slow; less consumption, less excretion, less breathing, less thinking. She hears Penny’s irregular inhalations getting worse and worse, and thinks of the fluid building in the lungs, bringing forth the death rattle.

 

Soon—so very, very soon—her breathing will cease. Quickly following suit will be her heart, and as the brain loses oxygen, it, too, will begin to die. Minutes later, the cells throughout her body will increase in acid, and the contents of her internal body will begin to digest itself with its own erosive enzymes. She will become cold, starting at the top, and making its way to the tips of every finger and every toe. Inside, her muscles will become depleted of their proteins, and will lock into place at the joints, and within hours, Penny will be stiff as a board.

 

Some consider it repulsive, but Scully thinks it beautiful—to know that, even after death, there is still a type of life happening inside the body, taking the flesh and blood and bone into a new state of being.

 

Penny is rattling like a maraca now, and her hands are cool between Scully’s warm ones.

 

Scully isn’t afraid of dying. It’s just science.

 

What Scully’s afraid of is leaving. Leaving is an abstract, and she’s never done well with those.

 

Penny’s monitor is giving out loud warning beeps as her heartbeat drops lower and lower. Scully can no longer make out a pulse against the veins of Penny’s wrist.

 

She gives another rattle: Loud. Abrasive. Singular.

 

There are no breaths to follow. Nurses are in the room within a minute, pushing past Scully like she were the one who was the ghost in the room. They don’t try to revive her, simply switch off the blaring flatline. She’s sure that for someone that sick, she would have gladly signed a DNR. That’s Scully’s plan, after all.

 

She pays no mind to the nurses going about the motions. She instead picks up a legal pad off the table, and scribbles out a note.

  


_To whom it may concern:_

_Her last words were to tell you she loves you._

_She said thank you for everything._

 

She doesn’t sign her name, and she doesn’t stick around to wait for Penny’s family to find it. Besides, the words are lies. The last thing Penny said before falling into her forever sleep were to Scully, and Scully only.

 

“Don’t let them win,” she had said.

 

And for the first time, Scully thinks it’s possible she might have some fight left to give.

 

—-

 

She doesn’t want him to see her cry, but she doesn’t know how to stop it. She allows him to hold her, but only for a moment, until the explicit vulnerability becomes too much for her. She wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, sniffs hard, and says it’s time to go.

 

On the highway, Mulder’s awkwardness is tangible, and Scully can’t see anything out her window because her view is blocked by the empty body of Penny Northern, and her ears are ringing with the sound of rattled breaths.

 

“Turn up there,” she says abruptly, startling Mulder, as they had been sitting in complete silence since the moment they got in the car.

 

“Where?” he asks.

 

“At the sign,” she says. And because he seems to do whatever she says—something that will need to be examined at a later date—he slows the car, and turns down a darkened, abandoned road with a sign that says ‘No outlet.’

 

He brings the car to a stop between the looming forest on either side of them, and throws it in park. Scully reaches over and turns the key, and the headlights go out, obscuring them from view. The interior car light fades, and the only light left is the moon peeking in through the leaves of the trees, and filtering through Mulder’s window, illuminating his profile. He’s watching her, waiting, but she has nothing to say.

 

She unbuckles her seatbelt and clambers over the gear switch, and settles herself on Mulder’s lap where there’s just barely enough room for her to fit, each knee on either side of his thighs, with the steering wheel digging into the small of her back.

 

“Scully, what—” Mulder begins, but she cuts him off with a kiss. She kisses him like she’s trying to merge them into one. She kisses him like she can transfer some of the heaviness inside her to him so she can feel even just a little bit lighter. She kisses him and subdues her mind with nothing but pure sensory feeling.

 

He pulls away from her, exhaling in quickened puffs, and she’s annoyed at him for stopping, but knows she can’t force him to continue.

 

“What are you doing, Scully?”

 

“Can we do this?” she asks him, and she loathes the weakness in her voice. “Will you do this? For me?”

 

He cups her face, and in the moonlight she sees the worry in his brow.

 

“You’re grieving. You’re not in your right mind.”

 

“I’m entirely in my right mind,” she counters. “That’s the whole problem.”

 

“Scully…”

 

“Please,” she whispers against his ear. She grinds herself on his lap, and feels him respond to her, but when she pulls up to look at his face, he still looks conflicted.

 

“You can’t just fuck everything away,” he tells her, and although the words are harsh, the tone is gentle.

 

“It’s not _going_ to go away. All I want is a reprieve.”

 

He searches her eyes in the darkness for whatever he can find. “Okay,” he says finally.

 

In an instant, she’s climbed back into her own seat, and is undoing the laces on her boots. She tosses them aside, tugs off her leggings and panties, but leaves on her skirt.

 

“Push your seat back,” she tells him, and as she kicks off the last of the clothes she’s willing to part with, she slides back his seat all the way it’ll go. She goes back to straddle him, and kisses him hard as she undoes the buckle on his belt.

 

There is no foreplay; this isn’t about pleasure, it’s about forgetting. He lets him slide a few fingers inside her to get her wet, and then she tugs them away. He places his hands on her hips, and she places hers around his neck, and adjusts the angle in their less-than-ideal position, until he’s finally able to push inside her.

 

It takes another minute of fumbling before she finds a rhythm, but once she does, she fucks him harder than she’s ever fucked anyone—she’s riding him like the world is ending.

 

He’s saying her name softly in her ear, and she is either moaning or sobbing or maybe, right now, there isn’t a difference. He hits her right where it counts, over and over, until he lets her pound her own pleasure from him, and all there is, for several blissful seconds, is the physical interrupting the torturous mantra of the Everything inside her mind.

 

He comes with her, and they come back down together. She cries on his shoulder, and he lets her. He’s still inside her and she doesn’t move away—she’s not ready to be her own person again just yet.

 

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he whispers so quietly she almost misses it. She cries harder.

 

“Don’t,” she tells him. “Don’t fall in love with me, we both know where this ends.”

 

“No we don’t,” Mulder says, and he pulls her from his shoulder, and holds her face in his hands, swiping away stray tears.

 

“Where exactly do you think this path is leading, Mulder?” she asks him, not wanting to look him in the eye, but not able to turn away.

 

“To the Truth,” he tells her honestly. “And maybe, just maybe, it’ll save you, Scully.” He cups the back of her head and lets her rest down on his shoulder again, their breathing in tandem. “Maybe it’ll save us both."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -shows up six months later to this fic with starbucks- hey guys, anyone still here?
> 
> (lol how pathetic is it that i had to add a "not abandoned" note on my fic description?) 
> 
> listen. i started this story in 2015, and i'm still updating. barring death, istg i /will/ finish it. i have a set number of chapters now, and i've already got part of chapter 12 written. my goal is to have it done before the season 11 premiere, but preferably way before then. we're getting closer, lads, we're getting much, much closer.
> 
> i'll start posting fic update information on my blog: alexkryceksbutt.tumblr.com/tagged/fickle+truths
> 
> thanks, as always, for your continued patience


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> new chapter, hooray. txf premiere date ended up being sooner than anticipated, so this won't be done by then, but this is currently my main project i'm focusing on, so at least updates should be more regular. four chapters to go. we got this.
> 
> alexkryceksbutt.tumblr.com
> 
> deuces

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” asks Scully.

 

Lifting his head from his precarious position between Scully’s thighs, Mulder furrows his brow. “Beg pardon?” he asks.

 

“Thanksgiving. It’s this Thursday. I was wondering what your plans were.”

 

Mulder blinks. “You were wondering that right now at this moment?” he asks, his hands resting on either of Scully’s bare calves. “Should I take that as an indication that I’m not doing the best job here, or…?”

 

“Oh, no no, you’re doing lovely, feel free to continue,” says Scully airily with a wave of her hand. Mulder regards her for a long moment before deciding not to comment on it. He goes back to the task at hand, and Scully makes a series of appreciative noises, before saying, “But were you going up to go see your mother?” 

 

Mulder pauses and looks back up at her, his tongue still hanging out of his mouth. “There has never been a time in my life that I’ve wanted to not think of my mother more than right now,” he says. 

 

“Sorry, sorry,” she says. “Just...do you do family holidays?”

 

“No,” he says reluctantly. “We’re not the holiday type.”

 

“What were you going to do, then?”

 

Mulder shrugs the best he can in his current position. “Probably sit in my dorm with UFO documentaries and cup ramen.”

 

“You don’t want a traditional Thanksgiving meal?”

 

“Hadn’t entertained the thought,” he says. “And I’m not that concerned about it right now—I don’t need to think about future meals when I’m already eating.”

 

Scully laughs as he buries his face in her again, and she gently lifts up his chin. He sighs at her, and she smiles back.

 

“Come spend the break with me at my house,” she says. 

 

Mulder considers this. A long weekend stuck in Annapolis, Maryland with the family of the woman he’s not officially  _ dating _ , per se, but  _ is _ currently performing oral sex on. He imagines looking Scully’s Navy captain father in the eye would be an absolute joy.

 

But then, it would be a whole four days he’d get to spend with Scully with no classes or conspiracies to get between them.

 

“If I say yes will you let me finish eating you out?” he asks finally.

 

“With pleasure,” she says.

 

“Then yes.”

 

Scully grins and nods soundly. She gestures towards her spread-eagle legs. “As you were.”

 

After he’s brought Scully to a satisfying finish, he props himself up beside her on her bed. Monica is in class, and the opportunity to fool around on a bed not several feet off the ground was too tempting to pass up. She settles into the crook of his arm as he holds her around her waist. She picks up a book on Einstein off her bedside table and flips it open to the page she’s dogeared. She reads with fervent attention, and Mulder watches her read with the same intensity. She silently mouths the words as she goes over them, and traces the lines of text with her index finger, and he catalogues this information in his mental file folder.

 

“I think I could get behind the idea of time travel,” she says after a while. “I could foresee a future when there would be enough gathered evidence to support it.”

 

“And you say you’re a skeptic,” Mulder says, burying his face in her hair to give her a kiss on the head. 

 

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility. It’s all here on the page, depending on how you interpret it.”

 

“I would pay good money to read your interpretation. If anyone could pull off rewriting Einstein, it’d be you.”

 

Scully doesn’t reply, but she smiles. Mulder revels in the peace of the moment. The quiet domesticity is a nice change of pace to the wild lives they have been living since day one. Scully hasn’t said anything about labels, and Mulder hasn’t been fool enough to bring them up; he figures himself lucky enough to just be allowed to fuck her and hold her. He knows the Conversation is an inevitability, but not knowing where exactly he stands with her, he’s happy to live in this limbo of ignorant bliss for a little bit longer.

 

Which, again, will be a bit difficult to explain to her parents at the Thanksgiving dinner table, something he had already forgotten he’d agreed to until just now. He furrows his brow.

 

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” he says with dawning comprehension.

 

“Hm?” she asks, stilling her finger on the page, marking her place. “Did what?”

 

“Asked me to come to your family’s place for the holiday while I was,” he clears his throat, “otherwise occupied?”

 

A shit-eating grin spreads across her face as she looks up at him shamelessly.

 

“I figured it would be the easiest way to get you to say yes.” 

 

Mulder scowls. “You’re too clever for your own good,” he says.

  
“I’m sorry,” she says, having never sounded less sorry. “Want me to make it up to you?”

 

“How would you do that?”

 

In lieu of an answer, she bends the corner of the page she’s on, and sits her book aside. She climbs over onto his lap so she’s straddling him, and runs her hands up his chest. “I don’t know, got any ideas?” she asks.

 

“I can certainly think of a couple,” Mulder says with a dry mouth, and sucks in a breath as Scully ducks down and earns a wealth of forgiveness from him with her lips.

 

—-

 

It was a lot easier to accept the idea of being face-to-face with Scully’s family when it was an abstract concept with his head between her thighs, than as an imminent scenario in the driver’s seat on Route 50, the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving.

 

(Scully had offered to drive, but Mulder insisted. He didn’t mention that it gave him an absurd sense of security, as though the drive to the Scully’s home was just another one of their crazy adventures. That, and ever since the night Penny had died, Mulder sort of regarded his car as eternally sacred.)

 

“So when your family kicks me out of the house for being a terrible influence on their beloved daughter, are you going to be able to find a ride back to campus?” Mulder asks, trying to sound casual, and hoping Scully doesn’t notice just how hard he’s white-knuckling it right now.

 

“Stop,” says Scully with a verbal eye-roll. “I’ve told you a million times, they’re going to like you just fine.”

 

“Will your parents care if I don’t make eye contact with them throughout the entire visit?”

 

“Why wouldn’t you make eye contact with them?”

 

“Because I’m pretty sure that if I catch their eye for even a second they’re going to know that I’ve touched your boobs.”

 

Scully snorts into her coffee, which is actually Mulder’s coffee, as he had taken to ordering extravagant lattes as a sort of experiment to see how often she would steal them. So far, it is 6 out of 7, but only because Scully had gotten a medication adjustment, and claimed it, “had already given her shits from hell,” and so she didn’t need to add the coffee on top of it.

 

“First of all, my parents aren’t telepathic, nor are they omniscient, so as long as you have the sense not to  _ mention _ that you’ve touched my boobs, I think we’re in the clear. Second of all, I’m a grown-ass woman, and I can have anyone I please touch my boobs.” 

 

“Both valid points, but as a counter argument, may I remind you that your father is a Navy captain, and surely has access to a wealth of weaponry?”

 

“What is this, a 90s sitcom? If my father sits you down to give you the, ‘if you hurt my daughter, I’ll break your neck’ speech, you let me know, and I’ll be sure to set him straight.”

 

“Somehow not very comforting, but I appreciate the effort. And what about the whole…” He removes a hand from the wheel to gesture vaguely at his entire person, where today he is wearing a sweater that has three grey alien faces and the word “REAL” written beneath them in cursive script.

 

“So they’ll think you’re a bit eccentric. Like the boobs, if you can manage to keep the conspiracy talk to a minimum, they won’t think anything of it. I’ve already told my mom a bit about you, and she said you sounded ‘charming,’ so you’ve already got that going for you.”

 

“Mm,” says Mulder, unconvinced. He doesn't have a great reputation with parents, including his own. His late father was a difficult man to love, who seemed to be a walking dichotomy, in that he always seemed to want Mulder to follow in his footsteps, but grew distant and irritable when he did. 

 

As for his mother, he wasn’t sure she had properly expressed an emotion since the day Samantha was taken. She was the type to quickly change the subject to “what wild weather we’ve been having,” if anything uncomfortable came up, no matter how mild the weather had been. Mulder knew she loved him, and he loved her deeply in return, but they certainly weren’t the Waltons, and it certainly didn’t set a good example for him on how to interact with actual, functional families.

 

“Honestly, stop worrying so much, it’ll be—fuck,” Scully says sharply. Mulder glances over at her to see she’s got her hand held up to her nose, with a line of blood from her nostril down over her lips to her chin. His stomach drops.

 

“Glove compartment,” he tells her. “I have some tissue.” 

 

“Thanks,” she mutters, trying to pull open the glove box without dripping blood on herself or the car. In his periphery he watches her stem the bleeding, and he’s reminded that this is a whole other can of worms. He’s going to be spending the long weekend in a house where everyone knows that Scully is dying, and he’s not sure what would be worse: If they all spoke of it openly, or if they all jumped around it like it were a snake in the grass. 

 

“This is on par with boobs and conspiracies,” she says in a voice that he suspects is supposed to be humorous, but falls flat. She blots her nose and sniffs. “Don’t tell them about it, or they’ll just worry.”

 

So avoidance was going to be the name of the game, then, Mulder concludes. 

 

“Noted,” he says in an equally pitiful attempt at sounding jovial. 

 

After a few minutes of tense silence, Scully, with bloody tissues balled up in her fist, points out the sign for their exit. He makes the turn and slows on the roundabout, the back of his throat tasting acidic. He knows it’s too late to back down now, and vows to never again make decisions when Scully is naked in his presence. 

 

Though, let’s be real, he thinks, with Scully dictating directions in his ear, even if she were covered head to toe, he’s not sure he could deny her anything. Dana Scully is 100% his kryptonite. 

 

At least, he figures, she’s hot.

 

—-

 

It takes Mulder approximately three minutes to get Bill Scully Jr. to hate him. 

 

When they walked through the door, Scully said to her brother, “Hugs in a minute, I really need to pee,” and had left them alone just long enough to run to the bathroom, and the subsequent conversation had gone something like this:

 

“You’re the Fox Mulder Dana’s been talking nonstop about, then?”

 

“I hadn’t been aware that she’d mentioned much of me, but yeah, I suppose I am.”

 

“The same Fox Mulder who got her thrown overboard into Lake Erie?” 

 

“Uh…”

 

“Mom told me about it—seemed to think it was amusing. Tell me, Fox, you know my sister’s sick, don’t you?”

 

“I do, yes.”

 

“And do you make it a habit of taking terminally ill cancer patients out fishing in the freezing cold, when they should be spending as much time as possible resting in bed?”

 

“Er, well, in my defense I didn’t know she was sick at the time of the boating incident.”

 

“Fine. Just make sure you don’t let it happen again. Dana’s stubborn as hell, and she’s not going to tell you she’s too sick to do something, so it’s  _ your _ responsibility to make sure she’s safe. Do you understand?”

 

“She seems pretty capable of taking care of herself.”

 

“Did you hear a word I just said?”

 

And that’s when Scully returned, and Bill turned to her with a big smile and a hug, saying, “Hey there, lil sis, it’s good to see you,” as he’d sent Mulder a glare over her shoulder. 

 

So far, so shitty, thinks Mulder, as Bill goes off to fetch the rest of the family to let them know Scully and her weirdo friend have arrived. 

 

“What’d you and Bill talk about?” asks Scully.

 

“Just your typical introduction stuff,” Mulder lies.

 

“Dana!” comes a female voice, and in comes a woman wearing an apron. She’s got dark curls and a lined but beautiful face, and Mulder knows immediately by their similarities in bone structure that this must be Scully’s mother. She engulfs Scully in a big embrace, and grips her tightly for several seconds, before pulling away, turning to Mulder, and pulling him into a similarly crushing hug.

 

“Oof,” says Mulder.

 

She lets him go quicker than she let go of Scully, but puts her hands on his chin. “You must be Fox,” she says kindly. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you.” 

 

“Likewise,” says Mulder, blushing, although somewhat satisfied by the grimace on Bill Jr’s face. 

 

“What’ve we here?” asks a man who’s clearly Scully’s father, stalking into the room. He isn’t as muscular, tall, or gruff looking as Mulder had anticipated, but he’s got an aura of command, both in his stature and his voice, which intimidates him just as well.

 

Instead of a hug, Scully stands at attention, and puts her hand to her forehead in salute. 

 

“Howdy, Ahab,” she says. 

 

Scully’s dad salutes back, and Scully grins, walking forward into her father’s arms, and he says softly, “Hey there, Starbuck,” patting her on the back. He glances up at Mulder, and when they make eye contact, Mulder tries desperately not to think of boobs. “Mr. Mulder?”

 

“Yes, sir,” says Mulder, hoping he doesn’t sound terrified. 

 

Mr. Scully steps away from his daughter in order to hold out a hand. Mulder takes it and feels like a limp noodle in Mr. Scully’s grasp. 

 

“Pleasure to meet you,” says Mr. Scully.

 

“You too, sir,” says Mulder, and he sees Scully smile at him out of the corner of her eye. 

 

“How was the traffic,” asks Mrs. Scully.

 

“Not bad at all, ma’am,” Mulder says, pretty sure he’s never sounded this formal in his life.

 

“I have a roast in the oven, but it’s still got another hour or so. I hope you aren’t too hungry. If you are, I’m sure I can rustle up some snacks,” says Mrs. Scully fretfully. Scully puts a hand on her shoulder.

 

“Mom, it’s fine. And you shouldn’t have gone to the trouble. We’re going to be in the kitchen all day tomorrow.”

 

“We still have to eat today, don’t we? Anyway, Melissa should be here any minute. Why don’t you go up and show Fox the guest room, and then get some rest before supper?”

 

“I’m not tired, mom.”

 

“You can always use a little extra rest…” Mrs. Scully starts, but Scully visibly tightens her grip on her shoulder.

 

“Mom,” she says sternly. “I’m okay. Let us go put our things away, and then we’ll come down and help you get the table set.”

 

“That’s not necess—”

 

“I’d love to give you a hand, Mrs. Scully,” says Mulder. He glances over at Scully. “And Dana slept on the ride over,” he lies.

 

“It’s not that long of a drive…”

 

“ _ Mom _ .”

 

“Oh alright. Go on then. Don’t make too much noise, though. Tara’s upstairs with the baby.”

 

Scully nods. She reaches down to pick up her suitcase, but Mulder grabs it first. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he smiles. 

 

“After you,” he says, and she rolls her eyes, but doesn’t protest, letting him clamber awkwardly up the stairs with both of their luggage in his hands. She leads him into the guest room, which is meticulous right down the the hospital corners on the bed. Mulder sets down the bags, and goes to unzip his coat, but Scully is on him all of a sudden, holding onto either side of his collar and smirking up at him.

 

“Who knew you were so good at being a suck up,” she says to him.

 

“Just trying to make a good impression,” says Mulder lamely.

 

“Mm,” says Scully, and she puts a hand on the back of Mulder’s head to pull him down so she can kiss him. Mulder’s eyes flutter shut, and he lets himself be properly kissed for nearly a minute, before forcing himself to pull back.

 

“Probably shouldn’t,” he says hoarsely, running a hand down Scully’s hair. “Don’t want to go back downstairs with swollen lips and give your family the wrong idea.”

 

“What idea is that?”

 

“That we’re, you know, more than friends...or, you know, whatever we are.” 

 

Mulder cringes imperceptibly at the needy implication in that sentence, and Scully searches his face. She appears to be about to say something, and Mulder braces himself for it, but she seems to think better of it, and pulls herself the rest of the way from him.

 

“No wrong ideas,” she agrees, expression unreadable. “C’mon. We best get downstairs and help my mom.”

 

She leaves through the door a bit more hurriedly than is necessary, and Mulder, tossing off his coat and following close behind, forces himself not to overthink it.

 

—-

 

Dinner with the Scullys is surprisingly painless. Scully’s parents ask generic questions, and Mulder is able to provide generic answers, so that the truth about his so-called ‘eccentricities’ is successfully avoided. 

 

Bill Jr. doesn’t seem to have warmed up to him in the least, but is keeping it to himself, likely for the sake of his sister. His wife is nice enough, and is too preoccupied trying to feed a squirmy 18-month old mushy carrots and potatoes to pay him much mind. 

 

Mulder finds himself particularly interested in Scully’s sister, Melissa. She wears a wired crystal around her neck, and smells like incense. She’s also the only one out of all of them who speaks to him without the air of, ‘you’re our guest, and here’s some small talk to keep everything pleasant.’ She talks about a recent trip she took up to the northwest, where she apparently lived entirely out of a van, and how it had been a really spiritual journey for her. She seems wistful, impulsive, adaptable, and everything Scully isn’t. 

 

Mulder thinks that it would make more sense, logically, that if there were a choice, he would be drawn more to the elder Scully sister, but somehow, listening to Melissa talk only strengthens his appreciation and affection for  _ his _ Scully sister. 

 

He’d say it’s the old cliche of opposites attract, except he’s not sure he’d call him and Scully  _ opposites _ , exactly. No, they exist on the same side; it’s just that they see it differently. See, that’s the beauty of their pairing—it’s not a case of “skeptic vs. believer,” so much as it’s two pairs of eyes seeing the same world from their own unique lenses, and then sharing their visions with each other. 

 

_ I see black and blue, you see white and gold. _

 

After supper, where he was properly filled to the brim with roast beef, potatoes, and a fresh vegetable medley—the first home cooked meal he’d had in...he couldn’t tell you—he joins the family in the living room. Mrs. Scully had shooed them all out of the kitchen, even when Mulder insisted on giving a hand. Melissa grins at him as she settles onto the couch beside him, saying, “She’s only acting like that because there’s company. Trust me, if you and Tara weren’t here, we’d all be saddled at the sink with sponges and dish rags, so thanks for that.”

 

Now, Mr. Scully and Bill Jr. are sat in adjacent recliners, watching a football game Mulder’s only half paying attention to, and Melissa is rattling on about something that seems to require no response besides the occasional “uh-huh” from Mulder, which is good, because most of his focus is elsewhere.

 

At his feet, Scully is on the floor, playing some inane game with her nephew. The baby giggles at her as she makes silly engine noises with her mouth, and pushes a toy bus around in front of him. She then scoops him up into her arms and blows raspberries onto his belly, sending him into absolute hysterics. She smiles so easily like this.

 

For the first time since she mentioned it, Mulder considers her infertility. He’d not pressed her for details, partially because he was otherwise occupied at the time, but also because he hadn’t felt it was any of his business, having already been so grossly involved in her personal life, but he wonders about it now. He watches her on the floor—arms full of a gleeful baby, her womb barren, the cells in her brain malignant—and suddenly, his heart aches for her; suddenly, his heart aches for himself.

 

It’s not like he has ever once in his life seen himself fitting into the cookie-cutter, nuclear family mold, but she makes him wonder what it would be like. If you asked him, his response would be, “Yes, I know it's crazy,” but still he finds himself thinking that if ever he were to build a family, it could only be with her. 

 

He imagines holding a child that’s made of him and made of her in equal measure, and it doesn’t seem ill-fitting at all. She would teach their child physics and biology, and about how time travel could maybe be possible if you worked hard enough at uncovering the science. Meanwhile, he would tell bedtime stories of fantastic myths and legends, always leaving the endings open to the possibility that there may be some truth to the tales. They wouldn’t have to give up their adventures—the looking for the paranormal with nothing but  a compass and the car headlights in the dark—they’d just have to adjust the journey to include a new passenger. He has no doubt that they would learn to live in what a family looked like for them.

 

And if the doctors are right, if her prognosis is true, even if she does have feelings for him approximating the feelings he has for her, he will still have exactly none of that life.  _ She _ will have none of that life—not with him, not with anyone.

 

God must be malevolent. Otherwise, God is a lie, and there must only exist an indifferent Universe, because nothing else makes sense. Any being that claimed to be loving, could never make someone like Dana Scully lose so many things she never even got the opportunity to have in the first place.

 

“You’re quiet,” Scully says, tapping him on the shin, her nephew playing with her hair. Melissa has stopped talking without him realizing it and is now scrolling through her phone, and the team Mr. Scully and Bill Jr. are rooting for is up 7 points. “What are you thinking about?”

 

“Time travel,” he says, just loudly enough for her to hear.

 

“What about it?”

 

“About what you said,” he tells her, looking at her and seeing eternities and deadlines concurrently. “About how maybe the science to do the impossible really does exist.”

 

“I believe,” she says, letting the baby loose and leaning back against the couch, “That there are always answers to those sorts of questions. You just have to know where to look.”

 

—-

 

It’s Thursday night, or Friday morning, depending on your definition. Scully is on her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She’s thinking about crying, but is not actually crying.

 

Through the walls, she hears her father snoring, and the distant ticking of their antique grandfather clock. She should be asleep, but tonight she doesn’t think she’s ever been more awake.

 

She had been spared the majority of the usual Thanksgiving hustle and bustle, as everyone was insistent that, “you needn’t over exert yourself, Dana, we’ve got it, why don’t you go rest?”

 

Never in her life had Scully so desperately wanted to do a chore.

 

But instead, she watched the Macy’s Day Parade, pretended to watch some football, and played card games with Mulder while he talked beliefs on astrology with Melissa. 

 

When dinner was served, she pretended to have the appetite of a healthy person, and overdid it to the point that the traditional, post-meal socializing was, on her part, spent largely sitting with her mouth shut, praying she could keep the contents of her stomach in place.

 

(“If you need to go throw up, I’ll cover for you,” Mulder had whispered to her. She hadn't even mentioned to him that she was feeling ill.)

 

Now, everyone has retired to their respective rooms, and presumably have fallen into deep turkey comas, meanwhile, Scully’s kicked her nausea, but has in turn, gained insomnia.

 

She feels sad, she realizes. She’s sad, but can’t pinpoint why.

 

Not that there is a lack of things to be sad about, of course. As proof, she makes a mental list:

 

  * Likely last Thanksgiving ever
  * Too sick to properly enjoy pie
  * That look mom keeps giving you when she thinks you’re not looking, but you’re totally looking, and it breaks your heart every time
  * The fact that you may be falling in love with someone who is going to watch you die
  * That whole “government conspiracy” thing
  * Headache



 

She could go on, but even these don’t feel right. Her sadness feels aimless and vague, which is, of course, the worst type of sadness, because there’s nothing to blame it on, and nothing to do with it, except feel it and wait for it to dissipate.

 

She reaches blindly for her phone, squints at the brightness of the screen, and sends a text.

 

_ u up? _

 

The reply comes in about ten seconds.

 

_ yep _

 

Without a moment’s hesitation, Scully pulls back her sheets, and climbs out of bed. She’s wearing flannel pajamas, and fuzzy socks, which is admittedly not her best look, but she can’t bring herself to care. (After all, lakewater wasn’t her best look either, but she still got laid.)

 

She opens her door slowly so it doesn’t creak, and pads softly towards the other end of the hall.

 

She enters the guest room without bothering to knock. Mulder, whose face is illuminated by his cell phone screen, startles as the door shuts behind her.

 

“Scully, what are you doing?” he whispers.

 

Scully’s not  _ sure _ what she’s doing, so she says nothing. Instead, she goes to the edge of his bed and, without waiting for an invitation, slides in next to Mulder.

 

“What if your parents find out you’re in here?” he whispers in protest, even as he makes room for her on the bed.

 

Scully burrows under his blankets, and rests her head on his bare chest. Almost as though it were involuntary, his hand finds her hair and begins to stroke it.

 

“I’m sad,” she says simply.

 

“Okay,” Mulder says after a moment. “Is it the ‘talk about it’ type of sad?”

 

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know what type of sad it is.”

 

“What can you tell me about it? Maybe we can figure it out together.”

 

“I have an increase of activity in my prefrontal cortex, and clearly, I’m not producing desired levels of dopamine. This is causing an effect in my lacrimal glands, as they are currently attempting to produce tears, despite my resistance. Likely, my pupils are smaller as well. Did you know that your pupils get smaller when you’re sad? I always thought that was neat.”

 

Mulder huffs a laugh out on the top of her head.

 

“That wasn’t quite what I meant,” he tells her.

 

“You told me to tell you what I knew about it. That’s all I know about it.” 

 

“Alright, I’m sorry,” says Mulder, softer. “Is it being with your family? Maybe it’s bringing up some, you know, unpleasant thoughts.”

 

“You mean like how this is probably the last Thanksgiving I’m going to spend with them before I die, or something?”

 

Mulder sighs. “Or something.”

 

“I don’t think that’s it. Or maybe it is. Maybe it’s that, and maybe it’s you, and maybe it’s Penny Northern, but it feels emptier than that. It feels like a pitfall, except there is no bottom; it’s just an endless drop in the darkness, and I’m getting close to falling into it, and as soon as I do, everything in this life is going to be for naught, and if that’s the case, then what’s the point of any of this?”

 

“Any of what?”

 

“Any of all of it. What’s the point of living if at the end all there is, is an eradication of everything that’s ever made your life worth it? What’s the point of even giving anything worth if that’s the endgame? What’s the point of loving if it only leaves behind suffering, until they, too, fall into the darkness? Existence just seems like a cruel joke tonight, and I have a headache, and damnit, now I’m crying.”

 

Lifting her head up just enough so he can wipe away a few tears, Mulder smiles sadly at her. “Seems your lacrimal glands won this round.”

 

“Add that to the list of bullshit, then,” she says, dropping her head back down, and breathing in his scent. He smells like Mulder, like whatever that particular combination is, and that alone brings her comfort, and her comfort brings her anger. “Put yourself on the list of bullshit, too,” she mutters, muffled against his skin.

 

“Beg pardon?” he says, and he sounds a little hurt, but she doesn’t have it in her to care. She turns just enough to meet his eye.

 

“Why didn’t you let me leave?” she asks.

 

“What do you—”

 

“I mean, why didn’t you just kiss my ass goodbye when you found out I was dying? How selfish are you to try and love me? How selfish are you to make me want to love you?” 

 

Eyes burning hot, she closes her eyes, and big, wet tears spill out down her cheeks. The back of her throat feels phlegmy, her nose stuffed, and her mouth is sticky, and it’s all bullshit, every last bit of it. Mulder lets her cry in silence for a while.

 

“I already told you why,” he says eventually.

 

“That doesn’t mean it’s not selfish.”

 

“Then let it be selfish. I haven’t given up hope on finding a way to save you, Scully, but if this ends in tragedy, I will never regret spending every last second I could with you. I will grieve, and I will hurt like Hell, but I’ll never regret you.”

 

“I want to believe that there’s something beyond this life,” Scully says. “I wear a cross, and I say my prayers, but when things like you happen, it makes it all feel like lies. Why give us to each other, only to tear us apart?”

 

“I’ll be the first to admit to you that I’m not a big church goer, Scully, so I’m not going to spout any ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ mumbo jumbo at you, but something tells me that whatever brought us both to that balcony on the same night at the same time, it wasn’t an accident. I can flip-flop on the idea of God, but I can solidly say I’ve never waivered on my distrust of coincidences.”

 

“So what? You’re saying it was fate?”

 

“ _Maybe_ _Truth_ ,” says Mulder, purposefully melodramatic, and Scully can’t help the small smile that forms.

 

“Shut up, Mulder,” she says. 

 

And he does. Mouth shut, he kisses the top of her head, and holds her tighter, fingers massaging her scalp. She listens to the rhythm of their tandem breaths, and without even meaning to, drifts into a dreamless sleep.

 

—-

 

Scully runs directly into her mother while trying to sneak out of Mulder’s room at around 8 in the morning.

 

They stare at one another before saying, at the same time,

 

“It’s not what it looks like,” 

 

and,

 

“Let’s not tell your father.”

 

Scully sighs. “Really, Mom, I was just—” but Margaret Scully hushes her.

 

“Come help me with breakfast? We can talk downstairs,” she says, which she knows is her way of suggesting they go somewhere with less potential ears. For once, Scully actually does want to go lay down in her room and rest, but she’ll be damned if she says anything of the sort to her mother. She follows her down into the kitchen.

 

Neither says anything for several minutes. Scully leans against the counter, while her mother gathers some eggs, cheese, and leftover ham to make omelettes.

 

“Would Fox like tomato in his?” she asks.

 

“Yeah, he’d like that,” Scully says.

 

“Good, good. So is he your boyfriend?”

 

The question catches Scully off guard. “No!” she says on impulsive. “I mean, I don’t think...it’s not...Mom, it’s complicated.” Mrs. Scully hums her understanding, and merely waits for Scully to elaborate. Scully rolls her eyes. “He’s a great guy, Mom, I like him a lot.”

 

“But…?”

 

“But...I don’t know. Just, but.” 

 

“But you don’t want him to see you get sicker?”

 

Scully lets out a puff of air between tight lips, and damns her mother’s intuition. “Something like that, yeah.”

 

“He certainly cares a great deal about you,” says Margaret, tying an apron around her waist, and pulling down a mixing bowl.

 

“How could you possibly know that, Mom, you’ve known him two days?” 

 

“And I knew in about two seconds that he thinks that you’re the sun the world revolves around.” She smiles a bit wistfully to herself as she cracks an egg on the side of the bowl. “No one looks at another person like that unless they love them.”

 

“Mom…”

 

“I’m not discouraging it, Dana.”

 

“Yeah, but maybe I am,” says Scully quietly. Margaret stands up straight to look at her daughter.

 

“He knows you’re sick, right?”

 

“He knows.”

 

“Then he knows what he’s signed up for.”

 

“What if he hasn’t thought it through?”

 

“Dana, do you trust this boy?”

 

“I...yes. Yes, of course, with my life.”

 

“Then trust him to make his own decisions.” She turns back to her cooking; cracks another egg. “He’s the only one who can truly decide if loving you is worth the pain, and by the looks of it? I think he has.”

 

—-

 

At the kitchen table, Mulder is eating his omelette, and Scully is picking at hers, when her father comes in with the morning paper.

 

“What’s this supposed to be?” he asks Margaret, as he pulls a card out from under the rubberband looped around the newspaper. Margaret peeks over his shoulder to see what he’s looking at, and frowns.

 

“Is it some kind of advertisement?” she asks.

 

“If it is, then whoever pitched it should be fired. I’ll be damned if I know what it’s selling.” 

 

“Just toss it then,” says Margaret, and William Scully tosses it in the trash, and heads into the other room to read his paper.

 

Scully pays this almost no attention, and goes to say something to Mulder, only to see him eyeing the bin that her dad just threw whatever it was into. 

 

“Mulder?” she asks, and Mulder turns back to her, and smiles a fast smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. She furrows her brow.

 

“Do you two need anything else?” asks Scully’s mom. 

 

“No thank you, ma’am,” says Mulder, a bit quicker than he usually would. She gives Margaret the same smile he gave Scully. Instead of appearing to find it odd, Margaret just smiles back, and heads out, saying something about, “getting Bill and Tara to come down for breakfast.”

 

The second Margaret is out of the room, Mulder gets onto his feet and lifts the lid off the trash can. 

 

“Mulder, what the—” Scully starts, but Mulder is already headed back to the table, a small, white card in his hand. He reads it over, and then hands it to Scully with a significant gleam in his eye.

 

Scully takes it, but can’t read it. 

 

“Is this in Russian?” she asks.

 

“Or some slavic language. I’m pretty sure it’s Russian, though,” says Mulder, sounding excited.

 

“I don’t get it,” says Scully. “Does this mean something to you?”

 

“No,” says Mulder happily. “Which is why I think it’s supposed to.”

 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Scully is saying, but Mulder is clearly not listening. He takes the card back from Scully, and snaps a picture of it with his phone. He then starts typing something rapidly, and then sits the phone back down to reexamine the card.

 

“The last line is in the English alphabet,” he says, pointing. There are two capital letters. AK. 

 

“AK?”

 

“What do you think they could mean?” asks Mulder, emanating the energy of a kid in a candy store.

 

“How should I know? Initials, maybe?”

 

“ _ Initials _ .” He says the word like he would say ‘amazing.’

 

“Mulder, I still don’t get—” but at that moment, his phone chimes, and it’s in his hand not a second later. 

 

“Got a translation,” he says. “Gunmen,” he adds, to Scully’s bewildered expression. He holds out the phone for her to read.

 

_ There’s an abandoned parking garage on the corner of 202nd and Apple Avenue. Quarter to midnight I’ll be waiting.  _

 

_ -AK _

 

“I don’t understand, is this telling us to meet this AK person there?”

 

“Seems like it,” says Mulder, picking up the card again, and holding it up in the light, as though examining it for clues. 

 

“And you assume it’s for you?” Scully asks. Mulder glances at her with a raised eyebrow, and she tilts her head to the side, saying, “No, stupid question, I know it’s a stupid question, never mind. But Mulder, you can’t possibly be considering  _ going _ to this place in the middle of the night, are you?”

 

“Scully,” he says flatly.

 

“Yeah, okay, another stupid question.”

 

Mulder grins. “You know what I’m gonna say next, right?”

 

Scully sighs. “You want me to come with you.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement.

 

“Are you going to?”

 

She rolls her eyes so hard her sockets hurt.

 

“Of course.”

 

—-

 

Around 11:15, under the guise of scribbling out a quick, ‘went to meet up with some old friends downtown, be back soon,’ note, in case her parents wake up, Scully goes to her room, and opens up the bottom drawer of her desk. From it she pulls out a lock box, and she enters the combination. She takes out the small pistol inside it—a gift from her father several years ago, without her mother’s knowledge—and tucks it safely into the waistband of her jeans.

 

—-

 

Mulder may have a complicated relationship with government conspiracies right now, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still get a boyish thrill whenever something new presents itself. He feels practically giddy as he and Scully pull into a dark, rundown parking garage, in an otherwise deserted area of town, say for a couple homeless people draped in newspaper and rags on the inside edge of the sidewalks.

 

The note didn’t tell him where to meet this AK person, but his intuition tells him to go up as high as he can, and so he does. They stop just short of the roof, and get out of the car.

 

“Do you think we’re on the wrong level?” asks Scully after 11:45 comes and goes. “Or maybe we’re being played?”

 

Before Mulder can answer, there is suddenly the sound of footsteps, and the unmistakable noise of the safety on a gun being unlocked. Scully and Mulder both turn to see a dark figure approaching them.

 

A few street lights are filtering in, and their eyes have mostly adjusted, but Mulder still can’t make out a face right away. Before he does, he first sees the shape of a hand holding a gun, pointed straight in their direction. Even as fear threads through him, he can’t help but feel a thrill.

 

The figure stops just short of eyesight. “Fox Mulder,” says the voice of the faceless man. “And you brought your girlfriend, too. Tell me, Ms. Scully, is this the kind of thing he considers to be a date?”

 

“You appear to know us, but I’m afraid we haven’t had the pleasure of an introduction. Care to give us a name? Or show your face, at least?” says Scully, and Mulder is flooded with pride with how steady her voice is.

 

The man stands still for several more seconds, before taking two large steps forward. Now, Mulder can make out the face of a young, reasonably attractive man, with eyes that Mulder’s sure are dark even in the daylight. 

 

“Alex Krycek,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

 

“We’d say the same, but it’s hard to appreciate a new friend when they have a gun on you,” says Mulder, and Alex Krycek smiles slightly.

 

“I don’t make many friends,” he says. “I mostly make enemies. Let’s just call this life insurance.” 

 

Krycek’s full attention is on Mulder, as though he’s collecting information on him. Mulder feels strangely vulnerable, and the gun isn’t helping. He’s vaguely aware of a small rustling from Scully next to him, and he glances to see how she’s faring, only to see her whip a pistol out of the waist of her jeans, clicking the safety off while aiming it right at Krycek in a single, swift motion.

 

“What the fuck, Scully?” Mulder blurts out, and even Krycek appears surprised.

 

“Did I not mention my conceal to carry permit?” asks Scully to Mulder, but not taking her eyes off Krycek.

 

Mulder flounders for a few seconds. 

 

“Would you think less of me if I told you I’m a little turned on right now?” he asks in a whisper. Scully’s eyes flick to his.

 

“Not the time, Mulder,” she says flatly.

 

“Right.” He turns his attention back to Krycek, who has appeared to have recovered from his momentary lapse. “So now that the playing field is level, are you going to tell us why you summoned us here?”

 

“Let’s just say,” says Krycek slowly. “That I have something you want.”

 

“What could we possibly want from you?” asks Scully, her arms gripping her pistol not wavering in the slightest. The grin that blooms on Krycek’s face is nasty.

 

He says, 

 

“I know how to cure your cancer.”


	13. Chapter 13

The silence that follows is deafening. Scully’s grip on her gun slackens for a split second in shock, but she quickly recovers, and her fingers squeeze so tight to compensate that there’s an ache in every knuckle.

 

“Bullshit,” she says, but even as she says it there is doubt.

 

No, not doubt, she realizes. Hope.

 

Beside her, Mulder’s tension is palpable. He says one word. “Explain.”

 

“Put your gun down first,” says Krycek.

 

“Not a chance,” says Scully. “Call it life insurance.”

 

“Not much life left for you to insure without my help, now is there?” asks Krycek, but he lowers his own weapon, makes a show of removing the clip, and sits it down on the concrete ground in front of him. “I’m not here to shoot you,” he tells them. “I’m here to talk.”

 

Scully looks over to Mulder and he looks back. They exchange a wordless conversation, before Scully concedes and lowers her own gun as well. She switches on the safety, and sticks it back into the waist of her jeans. She does not remove the clip. 

 

She stares at Krycek expectantly. He takes a step forward, and then another, and another, until the two of them are face to face. He lifts a hand to her, and Scully forces herself not to flinch  as the tip of his index finger ghosts over the space between her brow where her tumor lurks beneath the skin. He snatches his hand back suddenly.

 

“Women,” he says, speaking just to her. “Abductees, all with the same story; a metal implant, a barren womb. Brain cancer. All of them with memories they don’t how to reconcile.”

 

“I have no memories,” says Scully, and Krycek understands.

 

“Doesn’t matter. Whether or not you remember what they did to you, you can’t deny that they did  _ something _ .”

 

Scully feels a flush of anger at Krycek—this nobody but a stranger with a gun—presuming to tell her what she can or cannot do. “I don’t even know who  _ they _ are, or if they even exist. I can only and will only be certain of what’s tangible; of what’s in front of me. I have the proof of my cancer, but I am not under any obligation to believe it’s the result of anything but a natural occurrence of mutation within my body. And, It should be noted, that I am  _ especially _ hard pressed to believe the word of a stranger with a gun who will only show his face in the dark.”

 

“The things you don’t know,” says Krycek unfazed, “would fill more books than your bookshelf could hold.” He steps back so he can look to them both. “Even you,” he says to Mulder, “with your sources and your searches, are only at the very tip of the iceberg of what’s really going on out there.”

 

“So why don’t you enlighten me?” asks Mulder, and Krycek grins.

 

“I would think someone like you would realize that it’s dangerous to know the Truth,” he says. “Your father knew it; he knew it all, and what did it get him? A bullet to the back of the skull and a resting place six feet under, and his only son running right along in the footsteps he left behind.”

 

Scully had already put together, through context clues, that Mulder’s father had passed, but he doesn’t talk about it, and so she doesn’t ask. She hadn’t realized the rabbit hole of the search for the Truth was a family affair. How deep does it go, and how far in it has Mulder already fallen? How deep, she wonders, has she?

 

“My father was a fanatic,” Mulder spits. 

 

“And yet, look how close the apple’s fallen from the tree,” counters Krycek, and Mulder glowers. 

 

“What do you want from us?” Scully asks. “Honestly, why did you bring us here? Was it just to run us around in circles with cryptic information, because if so, I might as well have stayed home.”

 

“I told you what I want.”

 

“No, you’ve told us what you have,” says Mulder. “And you haven’t even really told us that. And even if you do know what it is you say you do, how do we know we can trust you? Surely there are strings attached . Or maybe you’re fighting for the other side.”

 

From outside the walls of the parking garage, Scully can hear shouts of people doing shady things in the safety of the night. She hears a car speed down the highway, and hears another’s tires burn rubber with a screech of their breaks. She takes it in as a reminder that the world is still moving on as it always has, because right now she feels like it’s standing still for her. Mulder has taken her from real life and thrown her into a fantasy. 

 

Or maybe, she always was inside a fantasy, and Mulder just made her self-aware.

 

“The only side I fight on is my own,” Krycek says.

 

“So you’ll work with whomever cuts you the better deal? So what’s the matter, then, did they decide not to give you your Christmas bonus this year?”

 

“Let’s just say that working for them has become something of a liability.” 

 

“Oh that’s right,” says Mulder with a hint of irony. “Because you make enemies, not friends, right?”

 

“That’s right. Unless,” he says, shrugging. “You know, enemy of my enemy.”

 

“Is that what you’re here for?” Scully asks. “To make an alliance?”

 

“To make a mutually beneficial decision,” Krycek corrects. “The information I have? If it fell into the wrong hands—if it fell into the hands of the son of William Mulder—it could be catastrophic for the men who’ve dedicated their life to this work.” Krycek appears utterly delighted at the prospect of destroying someone’s life work.

 

“Fine,” says Mulder. “Then give us this supposed cure and we’ll be on our way.”

 

“It’s not that simple,” Krycek says, and both Scully and Mulder let out identical, bitter laughs.

 

“Meaning you don’t actually have it,” says Scully.

 

“Meaning that no, I don’t have it in my pocket,” says Krycek defensively. “But I know the people who do. I can tell you with absolute certainty,” he says, looking directly at Scully, “that there  _ is _ a cure, and I’m the only one who’s going to be willing to point you in the right direction.”

 

“So you can send us on some wild goose chase to get you revenge?” asks Mulder.

 

“So you can save Dana Scully’s life.”

 

Mulder says nothing at this. Neither does Scully, although she has plenty she wants to say. She wants to tell Mulder not to let emotion get in the way of reason, because she can feel his resolve slipping. She wants to tell him not to let hope blind his way through reality. She wants to tell him that if he truly loves her like he says, that he won’t risk himself for her sake.

 

“Here,” says Krycek. He pulls out a folded piece of paper and gives it to Mulder. “Believe me, don’t believe me, I can’t make the choice for you. But at least get the facts right before you make your judgement.” He leans down to pick up his gun. He locks it back together, and then turns to walk away.

 

“You’re pretty self-confident for someone who just wants to save his own ass,” says Mulder, hand holding the paper still outstretched in front of him.

 

Krycek stops walking but doesn’t turn around.

 

“In a world like this, Mulder, you’ve gotta be your own advocate.” He starts walking again, calling out, “I’d stop worrying yourself over my ass and start focusing on protecting your own. People like you and me don’t make, friends, Mulder. Just enemies.” 

 

And almost like he evaporates into the wind, Krycek disappears into the shadows, leaving nothing but the two of them standing in the emptiness, the distant sound of the world still moving just beyond them past the walls.

 

—-

 

“Mulder,  _ no _ ,” says Scully for what feels like the thousandth time.

 

Back in the car, it’s taken them approximately two seconds to start arguing about what they are going to do next.

 

“What if he’s telling the truth and we decide to ignore it, Scully? What if there really is a cure out there? What if we can save you?”

 

“It isn’t worth it,” she says. “It isn’t worth the risk of trusting that man, or trusting that any answers he may lead us to may truly be the answers we seek.”

 

Mulder chews his lip, his jaw set. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and mutters, “Anything that could get you healthy would be worth the risk.”

 

“Not if it means putting you in danger, Mulder.”

 

Mulder sighs. Clearly, they’ve reached an impasse.

 

Not that it matters, of course, Mulder’s already decided he’s going to follow this lead as far as it will take him, even if it leads him straight off a cliff. But he’d feel better about it if Scully approved.

 

“At least let me take that info to the Gunmen,” Mulder says. The paper Krycek had given them contains several lines of computer code, which he strongly suspects is connected to the database file Scully and the other women are listed in.

 

“Fine,” Scully concedes. “But not until we get back. In fact, we’re not even going to think about any of this until we’re back on campus. We’re not going to talk about any cures, or what your father has to do with any of this, or why random men send you letters in Russian asking you to come meet them in abandoned parking garages in the middle of the night. Not until Sunday.”

 

“Can’t I just—”

 

“You can’t text it to them either. Don’t even mention it to them. I want to spend the rest of my holiday without thinking about any more goddamn government conspiracies.” Mulder opens his mouth to protest, but then she has to go an add, “ _ Please _ ?” in a desperate sounding voice, and he can’t bring himself to fight her anymore.

 

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “No conspiracies.” 

 

“Just for one more day.”

 

“One more day.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

Mulder nods as he pulls onto the Scullys’ street. A light dusting of snow has fallen, and in the twilight hours of the night, the neighborhood appears quiet and peaceful. It’s a stark contrast to the dark and ugly parking garage off the highway from where they’ve come. Scully’s right—conspiracies don’t belong here.

 

“What are we going to do with our last conspiracy free day, then?” asks Mulder, parking the car in front of the house. He turns to look at Scully, and she smiles that soft smile she has that gives him bizarre heart palpitations. She reaches up and cups his cheek. He leans into her touch gratefully, suddenly feeling the weight of everything that has just transpired.

 

“If you swear to me you’ll be good and not break your promise about saving all the heavy stuff until Sunday,” she says in a calculated tone. “Then we can start our conspiracy free day with me sucking you off in my childhood bedroom.”

 

Yes, Mulder thinks, he can put off the chase one more day.

 

—-

 

After five or six hours of restless sleep, Scully wakes up at ten after nine, alone in her bed. Mulder had snuck back into the guest room last night after some fooling around (wherein Mulder mentioned, at least five times, how sexy Scully looked holding a gun), so Scully isn’t sure why she’s disappointed he’s not here. She has that hollow feeling you get when you know you had nightmares, but can’t remember what they were about. She can make an educated guess, of course. Ten bucks says they included darkened concrete buildings and silver pistols, but still, she’d rather not speculate. 

 

She goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower. As the water heats up, she slips out of her clothes and examines a trail of three diagonal red marks just beneath her collar bone, left by Mulder’s mouth. They remind her of Orion’s belt, the constellation Mulder had taught her to see the night her entire life changed.

 

That happens a lot, she realizes, her entire life changing. Seemingly insignificant moments that make up brand new storylines in her narrative—a car slowing down beside her during her daily walk to school; a nose bleed she got just one too many times; a boy in an alien sweater teaching her about the stars.

 

But then, weren’t all these moments connected? Didn’t each one lead to the next? Her fingers trace lightly over the constellation that’s been kissed into her skin, and she wonders if maybe her life hasn’t changed at all, and has, in fact, been going down the road it’s always meant to travel, and she just didn’t know.

 

She showers, dresses, covering up the stars in an attempt to appear modest, and goes downstairs to find Mulder already awake, sat at the table with her mother, and, oddly, their next door neighbor, Phyllis, who appears rather flushed.

 

“Good morning,” says Scully tentatively, stepping the rest of the way into the kitchen.

 

“Morning, dear. Phyllis, you remember my youngest daughter, Dana, don’t you?” says Margaret. Phyllis looks to Scully, startled out of whatever reverie she was in, and Scully sees her hands are trembling around her mug of coffee.

 

“Oh, yes, of course. Hello, Dana. How’s your health? Phil and I were so sad to hear about…” she trails off, and Scully waves a dismissive hand.

 

“I’m feeling fine, Mrs. McEntire,” she tells her. “But are you alright? You seem a bit shaken.”

 

Phyllis makes a soft “oh” sound, and looks back down into her coffee. Margaret puts a hand on her shoulder, while Mulder explains,

 

“Phyllis’ lhasa apso has gone missing.”

 

Scully is familiar with Phyllis’ lhasa apso. Painfully familiar, in fact, as Phyllis had had a tendency to let it defecate freely in their front yard, and on more than one occasion, Scully was forced to scrape the bottom of her shoes.

 

“Clementine has gone missing?” she says, pitching her voice high in what she hopes sounds like sympathy, although she sees the corner of Mulder’s mouth quirk up. She shoots him a stern glance. “Did he escape through the gate?”

 

At this, Phyllis bursts into tears and covers her face. Startled, Scully looks back to Mulder, who is now mirroring Margaret’s gentle patting of Phyllis’ back.

 

“Clementine hasn’t gone missing, so much as, well... been taken?” says Mulder delicately. Scully frowns.

 

“Taken? By whom?”

 

“By what,” says Mulder, and Phyllis sobs harder. “Phyllis here had just been explaining how there were clear drag marks across her backyard lawn, and animal footprints too big to be Clementine’s. And she also said there was...er...blood— _ shh, shh, Phyllis, it’s alright _ —in the snow.”

 

“Oh dear. A bigger animal must have gotten into your yard,” says Scully logically, trying to sound solemn. “It’s not unheard of, unfortunately, predator animals coming into city limits from the woods.”

 

“Yeah, true,” Mulder says, and she can hear the ‘but’ in his tone. She sets her jaw. “Buuut, the thing is, Phyllis says Clementine was inside the whole night.”

 

“Well then he must have gotten out somehow,” says Scully reasonably.

 

“He couldn’t have!” says Phyllis miserably, lifting her head up so abruptly both Mulder and Margaret jump and snatch their hands back. “He just couldn’t have! Every night our routine is the same. I take Clemmy out for a potty, and then I give him a piece of steak—my Clemmy only eats New York strips—and then I tuck him into his kennel with his Boopsie—that’s his stuffed squirrel—and I turn on his favorite Mozart symphony for him to fall asleep to.  _ Every night. _ ”

 

“Um...Okay, but then how could an animal get into your house and into Clementine’s kennel?” Scully asks.

 

“That’s the million dollar question,” Mulder says, and Scully swears she can hear  _ glee _ in his voice. “But Phyllis says there are claw marks inside the house too.”

 

“Darndest thing, darndest thing,” says Phyllis, blowing her nose loudly into a handkerchief. She turns to Mulder and affectionately puts the hand holding the handkerchief on his forearm and grips it, and Mulder tries to turn his grimace into a smile as she adds, “This wonderful boy here said he’d look into it. Said he’s got a knack for wildlife.”

 

“Did he now,” says Scully. Mulder gives her a completely shameless grin.

 

“Top Cub Scout all the way through to the eighth grade,” he says proudly. He puts a hand on top of Phyllis’ and says, “I couldn’t just let poor Clementine be lost out there, knowing I may be able to help.”

 

“Uh huh,” says Scully.

 

Mulder gets to his feet. “Not a lot of time to waste. You coming?”

 

Scully manages to swallow down every obscene thing she wants to say. She half hopes her mother will put on that sad look and ask her if she’s sure she’s up for it so that she can play the cancer card, but for once, Margaret is too preoccupied, trying to calm down a devastated Phyllis, to double guess Scully’s assessment of her own stamina. 

 

(The  _ one _ time, Scully thinks.)

 

“Yeah,” Scully says with a glare. “I’m coming.”

 

Mulder walks jauntily over to her, and says quietly, so that only she can hear, “You said no conspiracies. You never said anything about monsters.”

 

—-

 

“Does that look like blood to you?” asks Mulder, squatting on Phyllis’ hardwood floor, examining several long, deep scratch marks, with a darkly colored splotch of something beside it.

 

Scully, standing upright with her arms crossed, looks to where Mulder is pointing with a disapproving expression. “No,” she says. “No, I think that’s steak sauce.”

 

Mulder gets down lower to inspect it more fully. He can’t make a determination either way, so he takes his pinky, scoops up a bit of it with the edge of his nail, sniffs it, and then tastes it, the sound of Scully’s disgusted protest coming from beside him.

 

He gets to his feet, and wipes the dust off his jeans.

 

“Yep, it’s steak sauce,” he says.

 

“ _ What if it had been blood? _ ” asks Scully shrilly. 

 

“Then I wouldn’t be as absolutely affronted as I am right now that this little moving carpet eats better than I do, and on a nightly basis no less. Did Phyllis really marry a guy named Phil?”

 

“Unfortunately,” says Scully, nose still scrunched as she watches Mulder pick congealed steak sauce out of his fingernail bed. 

 

“Lovely place,” Mulder muses. The room is filled— _ filled _ —with porcelain dog figurines.

 

“So what’s your theory,” says Scully, ignoring him. “I know you have one.”

 

“I’m thinking all kinds of things,” says Mulder, knowing full well that each one will earn him a bigger eye roll than the last. He’s thinking poltergeist, he’s thinking cryptid, he’s thinking Hellhound—the list goes on. “I’m more interested in what you’re thinking, though.”

 

“I’m still going with what I said originally. You know, it’s not uncommon to hear of bear sightings every now and again. Especially around this time of year. My dad was actually just telling me how there’s been a food shortage due to deforestation. It makes sense—a bear, nearing hibernation, but having not amassed enough supplemental weight, goes into the city against her usual instinct in order to seek out food.”

 

“Uh huh, and how do you account for the back door being opened?”

 

“It’s a sliding door. If left unlocked, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility to believe a bear to be intelligent enough to figure out how to get it open.”

 

“And I’m assuming the bear just came and unlocked the dog kennel as well?” The kennel door is the type where the handle has to be squeezed together tightly in order to slide it into place. Mulder can’t even get those to work half the time.

 

“Of course not, but the kennel door could have been left open to begin with.”

 

“So Phyllis—plays her dog nightly symphonies while he dines on New York strip Phyllis—left both the back door and the kennel unlocked, despite making sure the doors are locked being a part of her nightly routine?” 

 

“It’s the most logical solution.”

 

“So let me get this straight. Your theory is that a bear wandered into town, unseen, sifted through  _ no _ garbage cans, went after  _ no _ people, but entered Phyllis’ backyard—another lock that would have needed to be unlocked, by the way—opened the sliding glass door without leaving any pawprints on the window panes, came inside quietly enough that no one woke up, and grabbed Clementine, dragged him  _ back _ outside instead of just eating him there, or leaving any sort of bloody mess, and then disappeared, leaving no tracks leading off the property, and, again, being sighted by no one?”

 

Scully glares at him.

 

“What do you think happened, then?”

 

“I don’t know definitively what we’re dealing with, but I think that whatever took Clementine had to have had the intelligence to navigate doors, the dexterity to open them, and probably had to have wings.”

 

“Wings?”

 

“Wings. Think about it. How else would it get away without leaving more tracks? You saw them yourself, they go in and go out, but all within the yard. There’s not a single print outside the gates, and the only other way out would be to go up.”

 

“So we’re looking for a creature that is sentient, has opposable appendages, and can fly?”

 

“It’s that, or a poltergeist.”

 

“Mulder, you’re crazy. Besides, let’s say, for sake of argument, that you  _ are _ right—why Clementine? Why is there only one victim, and why is it so specific that the creature had to go inside some batty old woman’s house to get it?”

 

Prepared, Mulder takes out his phone and opens it to the search page he has ready and waiting. He hands it to Scully, who takes it hesitantly, and looks it over.

 

“Complaints of missing pets under unusual circumstances leaves local Animal Control baffled,” she reads aloud.

 

“Posted today,” Mulder says cheerfully. “Twelve in total. We’re in luck, though, as they all follow a pattern. All the animals are small dogs, and the map of the affected houses—” he leans over Scully’s shoulder to pull up that page on his phone, “—shows the…the whatever it is making its way south east, before heading back up northwest to where we are. And look here,” he says, pointing excitedly. “Right outside city limits, right near the first attacks and this one? A dense, solitary, wooded area.”

 

“Don’t,” says Scully, as Mulder takes his phone back and slips it into his pocket. “Do not say the words that you’re about to say.”

 

“Come on, Scully,” Mulder says with a grin. “It’ll be a nice little trip to the forest.”

 

Scully groans.

 

—-

 

“How’d you explain this one to your parents,” asks Mulder.

 

Scully is glaring half-heartedly out the window, making a big show of annoyance over being dragged into another monster hunt to cover up the fact that she’s secretly delighted.

 

“I said one of my old teacher’s lost their dog the same way Phyllis did, and that we were going to go see if she knew anything.”

 

It wasn’t entirely untruthful. Her former lit teacher  _ was _ on the list of people whose pets had gone missing, and they  _ were _ going to go see if they could find out anything more about the disappearance of Clementine, so. 

 

“Good. Not that I’m advocating for you to lie to your parents, but I’m pretty sure your brother would drive me into the woods himself and nail me to a tree if he knew what we were really doing.”

 

Scully doesn’t even bother with a, “Aw, you’re being paranoid, no he wouldn’t!” because she saw the look Bill had given Mulder when she insisted she was feeling perfectly rested, and yes he would. He seems to think Mulder coerces her into saying she’s okay when she isn’t. She can’t damn her brother for his loyalty or protection, but he does have an uncanny ability to make her feel like she’s a ten year old girl all over again, and the cancer diagnosis and weird new friend certainly aren’t helping matters.

 

“Why would a wild forest cryptid feast on small dogs?” she says instead.

 

“I think it’s like what you said,” Mulder says, driving with one hand on the steering wheel, while searching blindly for his sunflower seeds with the other. Scully pulls them out from in between the seats and holds them open for him. He takes a handful, mutters a “thanks,” and continues to explain, “I think it’s likely a need for a higher amount of calories due to a drop in temperature, and a lack of a natural food source due to human intervention. I doubt this creature, whatever it may be, usually leaves the forest to feed, but as they say, desperate times and so on.” He throws an empty shell out the cracked window.

 

“Yeah, no, I get that. What I mean is, why small dogs specifically? Why house breaking? This creature of yours seems to be going to a lot of trouble to get its ‘prey,’ as it were.”

 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there has been a drop in Annapolis vermin, and just nobody has noticed. Maybe in feral cats, too. But then, a lot of animals hibernate during the winter, so maybe the dogs are just the easiest animal that fits the bill. Think about it—contained, plump and well-fed, and docile. It’s practically like handing a meal over on a platter.”

 

“Right,” says Scully, quirking an eyebrow at the stretch of road before them. Mulder laughs.

 

“You’re so cute when you’re being a stick in the mud, Scully.”

 

“Aren’t I always a stick in the mud?” Scully asks. Mulder grins.

 

“Guess that’s why you’re always cute, then.” 

 

Scully feels her face grow hot.

 

“Shut up, Mulder,” she says.

 

—-

 

Scully is a perfectly rational, reasonable, logical person, and, as such, she reasons, it is perfectly natural for her to be terrified of a dark, looming forest on a cloudy winter’s late afternoon.

 

“Are you afraid?” asks Mulder incredulously, smiling like it’s Christmas at the hesitant look on Scully’s face as they hover just along the outskirts of the woods.

 

“It makes evolutionary sense for a person to be frightened of dark woods. Our more primal selves still feel vulnerable in the face of situations wherein predators may have the upperhand.”

 

“Okay, Darwin,” says Mulder happily. “Are you coming with, or are your primordial instincts going to fight or flight you back to the car?”

 

Scully shoots him a nasty glance, before stepping purposely through the clearing, into the forest. Laughing, Mulder follows close behind.

 

“You weren’t afraid of the forest we went to that night we went UFO hunting,” he says after they’ve traveled a good distance between the trees.

 

“I’m not afraid, I’m...uneasy. And I was uneasy then, too, but that whole night was so absurd, I guess it distracted me. I must be getting used to your antics,” she says, her gait awkward on the unlevel ground. “What exactly are we looking for here, Mulder?”

 

“This,” he says. Scully looks to where he’s stopped.

 

“What is it?”

 

“Come check this out,” he says, and she goes over to where he’s standing. In the muddy snow, there is a set of animal tracks.

 

“Those are the same as the ones in Phyllis’ yard,” says Scully, squatting down and brushing away a couple wet leaves to examine the paw print more closely. “They look pretty fresh, too.”

 

“They head west, up over that hill,” Mulder says, pointing at a steep hill up ahead, which is completely blocking anything that may be lurking on the other side of it.  _ Fantastic _ , thinks Scully.

 

Together, they start to follow the tracks, silent as they focus their attention on not losing the trail. They start up the hill, and suddenly Scully gets hit with a wave of vertigo.

 

“Oh,” she mutters, stopping and steading herself against a tree. Mulder looks up from the ground and creases his brow in worry.

 

“You okay?” he asks, going over and holding her lightly around her upper arm. She nods, but when she does, the world goes in circles like a merry-go-round.

 

“I just need to sit for a second,” she says, and tries to make her fall to the ground as graceful as possible. Mulder chews on his lower lip, eyeing her cautiously. He kneels down so that they’re at eye level, and searches her face, and Scully’s not sure what he’s trying to find.

 

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

 

“Just got dizzy,” she says.

 

“What from?” 

 

Scully smiles grimly. “Cancer,” she says, and Mulder turns the color of ash at the word. She waves a dismissive hand, and tells him nonchalantly, “I get so up in arms about my family harassing me about taking it easy that I sometimes forget I actually don’t have the stamina I used to.”

 

“Do you need to go back? We could—” but Scully interrupts him.

 

“No, no, I’ll be fine, just give me a minute to get everything to stop spinning.”

 

“Are you sure? Don’t put on a brave face for my sake, I really don’t mind. Clementine seems like a bit of an asshole anyway.”

 

Scully huffs a laugh, and starts to get to her feet tentatively. Mulder holds his arms outstretched with her as she goes, as though she’s a toddler learning to walk, and could topple over at any moment.

 

“That hasn’t happened before,” he says. Scully shrugs.

 

“I can’t really expect to have terminal cancer and not have it cause more symptoms as it gets worse.”

 

“Is it?” Mulder asks. “Getting worse?”

 

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. Mulder appears to be close to vomiting, and so she takes his hand in hers and assures him, “I have scans this coming week. If anything new is wrong, they’ll tell me. I’m not dying today, okay? I just pushed myself a little too hard, that’s all. So let’s keep going, and go see if we can find this fantasy novel beast of yours, okay?” 

 

Mulder doesn’t seem convinced, but after a moment he nods. 

 

“I should be the one comforting you, not the other way around,” he says, as they start back up the hill, slower this time, still hand-in-hand. 

 

“It’s fine,” she tells him genuinely. “Every now and then, when you’re sick, you have to pause and let the ones who care about you know that it’s all going to be okay.”

 

Mulder doesn’t look at her. “That shouldn’t be your responsibility,” he says so quietly Scully thinks it’s meant to just be to himself, but she hears him anyway. 

 

“Mammal or avian?” she asks.

 

“What?” 

 

“This creature of yours. If it has feet like a bear or big cat, but wings like a bird, do you think it’s mammal or avian?”

 

Mulder blinks at her, and then visibly decides to take her hint that their previous conversation is over. “Who’s to say it’s not something else entirely?”

 

“So now not only is it a beast no one has ever heard of, it doesn’t even fit into known zoological categories? Pretty impressive monster you have there, Mulder.”

 

To her relief she gets a smile out of him. “For a student of science you’re pretty close-minded to the possibility that the world may be more complex than we know it to be,” he says pedantically. 

 

“Show me the proof and I’ll be the first to take it to the journals, but until then?” She shakes her head sadly. “No dice.”

 

“Yeah, well, what do you make of that, then?” Mulder asks, nodding. Scully follows his gaze. They’ve reached the top of the hill, and halfway down the other side there is a giant tree with deep, distinct scratch marks, and high up, on a big, sturdy branch, there is a positively giant nest. The two of them, paused at the peak of the hill, exchange a glance, before each taking a deep breath and heading down to the tree.

 

“Same as the ones on Phyllis’ floor,” Mulder concludes once they’re close enough to inspect the scratches in the bark. He looks above them and ponders the nest. Then, without a word, he jumps, grabs onto a low hanging branch, and braces his feet on the trunk.

 

“Mulder, what—” Scully asks, and cuts herself off, watching with her mouth slightly gaped as Mulder pulls himself up higher and higher up into the tree. She’s torn between awe and exasperation. “If you fall, I’m not calling 911,” she calls up to him.

 

“Calling that bluff right now, Scully,” Mulder yells back down. He makes a hop from one branch to another, and Scully is pretty sure her heart stops for a split second. She regains the ability to breathe as Mulder settles himself next to the nest, and peers over into it.

 

“Well?” Scully yells after Mulder offers nothing for a long moment.

 

“Nobody’s home, but something was definitely dining up here,” he calls, sounding uneasy.

 

“Dining on what?” 

 

“I...can’t tell. There’s not enough left of it,” he says. Scully scrunches her nose. “Hold that thought,” Mulder says. He leans so far over he’s practically inside the nest. He leans back out, holding something in his hand. “Catch,” he calls down to her, and lets it drop. She catches it with both hands. “Nice reflexes, Scully.” She ignores him in lieu of examining the object now in her grasp.

 

It’s a dog collar decorated in bright, purple and blue cupcakes. It has been gnawed on, and is covered in what is definitely not steak sauce. The little silver, bone-shaped name tag reads, in clear, uppercase letters, “CLEMMY.”

 

“At least he got a nice last meal before he became one,” says Mulder, closer than she expects. She startles, and turns to see him climbing swiftly back down the tree. He hangs a second on the lowest branch, feet dangling, before letting go and landing hard on his feet. “I feel kind of bad for calling him an asshole, now.”

 

“Poor Clementine,” is all Scully can think to say.

 

“I didn’t get the impression you liked him all that much.”

 

“That doesn’t mean I wanted him to be  _ eaten _ ,” she says, scandalized. 

 

“Cats or dogs?” asks Mulder.

 

“Dogs. Small dogs even. Just not this one,” she says, gesturing to the collar of the late and maimed Clementine.

 

“Huh,” says Mulder, picking splinters of bark out of the palms of his hands. “I would have pegged you 100% as a cat person.”

 

“I guess I always keep you guessing.”

 

“Without a doubt,” Mulder says fondly, looking at her as though her bundled up in winter’s clothes, holding a bloody dog collar is the best thing he’s ever seen. She blushes a bit under the scrutiny. 

 

“Any clues of what caused Clemmy’s untimely demise?” she asks.

 

“Nah,” says Mulder, adjusting his coat that got pushed up and twisted from his climb. “Guess zoological science as we know it lives to see another day.”

 

“That’s it?” Scully asks, surprised. “We’re not going to stake out the place? Build our own decoy nest and keep watch with binoculars?” 

 

“We got what we came here for,” he says, nodding at what remains of Clementine. “No sense in needlessly worrying your parents. Plus I’m sure your mom has a nice supper planned for your last day in town. The mystery will still be here tomorrow or the next day.”

 

He says it casually, but Scully gets the distinct impression he’s still fretting about her dizzy spell. But if he’s not going to bring it up, neither is she. Instead, she takes his hand again, and they start back up the hill towards the direction of their faithful car.

 

“What are we going to tell Phyllis?” she asks him. “I think it would be in poor taste to just hand over the collar.”

 

Mulder laughs.

 

“Let’s just tell her that the good news is she’s about to save a lot of money on groceries now that she no longer has to buy New York strips.”

 

—-

 

Mulder holds himself steady with his arms crossed, trying to put on a calm disposition, as though he’s merely just curious, but he knows Scully can see right through him. She knows he’s agonizing over what they’re about to discover, and he knows she knows, but they both have the sense, or maybe the stubbornness, not to say it aloud.

 

“I’m in,” says Langly, in true hacker fashion. The paper with the lines of computer code is sitting beside him on the desk. The big, red “ACCESS DENIED” screen disappears, and opens to what appears to be a list of names in a file folder.

 

“What’s the verdict?” asks Frohike from Mulder’s other side, standing on his tiptoes to try and read over Langley’s shoulder.

 

“This doesn’t make any sense,” says Byers, leaning on the desk, eyes flitting down the information on the screen.

 

“What doesn’t?” asks Scully. She sounds calm, but Mulder knows she isn’t. She knows he knows. They don’t mention it.

 

“It’s a list of women who have sought treatment at a fertility clinic,” Langley says, scrolling down the impossibly long list of faceless women. “Why is this behind one of the government’s strongest firewalls?”

 

“And my name is on it?” 

 

“Yep,” says Byers, pointing to a line of small print that reads, “Scully, Dana Katherine.”

 

“Then the better question to ask is why am I listed as one of the people who’ve sought treatment for infertility when I’ve never once set foot inside a fertility clinic?” 

 

The Gunmen all exchange a glance, and then look to her in unison, answerless.

 

“The clinic,” Mulder says to Langley. “Does it have a name?”

 

“Yeah, hold on let me see if...” Langley's fingers run over the keyboard effortlessly. “There,” he says, pointing at the screen. “I’ve got an address.”

 

Mulder looks to Scully and sees she’s already looking back. He knows what they have to do, and he knows she knows too, and this time it doesn’t even need to be said.

 

“We’re going to need your guys’ help,” he says, turning to the Gunmen. “We’re breaking into a fertility clinic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know anything about guns or computer code. i may actually get this done by the x-files premiere. maybe. we'll at least get close. stay tuned. updates at alexkryceksbutt.tumblr.com.
> 
> Validate Me


	14. Chapter 14

But before Mulder is able to orchestrate what he has dubbed to only himself the “Fertility Clinic Heist,” he receives an email from his advisor requesting a meeting for Tuesday afternoon.

 

College, he thinks, is really getting in the way of his more important extracurricular activities.

 

After grabbing a quick and disappointing lunch of a slice of lukewarm pizza and a glass of orange juice from the dining hall, Mulder trudges across campus to the Psychology building. 

 

He really hates walking around campus during class time on the weekdays, because that’s when  _ people _ are around, and it’s exhausting. They all seem to have the same face, as though, even without knowing a single one of them personally, he’s met every single one.

 

Mulder can read people like books, and has long since concluded that the student body at this university is a particularly dry read; carbon copied faces all telling the same stories over and over again:

 

    * Passing by him right now is the story of _The Girl Who Came from Money, and Her Scholarship Friend with the Knock-off Handbag_
    * The crowd blocking the middle of the sidewalk all reek of _I’m on Honor’s Roll and am Better Than You_
    * _I Own a Frisbee_ , says every man he walks past
    * And the women say, _We All Drink the Same Type of Cocktail_
    * Campus as a whole could be called _So Much Greek Life You’re Surprised You Can’t See the Acropolis_ , or, alternately,



 

  * __Black People Makeup Half the Population of DC, Why Are We All White?__



 

  
  


How dull. This school, he thinks, not bothering to hide his disdain, is too small for its goddamn good. Mulder finds himself searching the mini crowds of students going from one class to another, hoping to catch a glimpse of red hair among the blondes and browns. Dana Scully, enigmatic and so entirely her own person, brings light to the dullness of the monotonous, daily college life.

 

Of course, he knows he won’t find her here. She’d left his bed that morning and changed into the clean clothes she’s been keeping in the dresser drawer he’d cleaned out for her. He’d watched her, as he always did when he got the opportunity to watch her get ready in the mornings, as it still hasn’t lost that particular sense of intimacy, and as he watched her comb her hair back into a lazy half-ponytail, he did so with stones in his gut. She’d been getting ready to go to her doctor’s appointment for scans.

 

And so even as he searches for her now, he knows full well that he won’t find her. Right now she’s somewhere with an oncologist taking pictures of her skull, thinking they have the agency to determine whether or not she gets to live or die. He’d told her he’d come with her, but she’d told him not to skip his meeting with his advisor on her account, all while trying and failing to suppress a facial expression that clearly said, “I can’t think of anything worse than you seeing me in a paper gown, openly sick and vulnerable,” and he respected her too much to press the issue.                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

So now he’s going to his meeting with his advisor, because he can’t think of a good reason not to. But he doesn’t want to go. He can’t imagine his advisor has anything nice to say to him—at least he never has in the past. Throughout Mulder’s entire college career, he’s met with his advisor five times in total, and all at the request of his advisor, not him.

 

He climbs the stone steps of the Psych building, which is ancient and dedicated to some old white guy who was important only insofar as the number of zeros on his alumni check donations.

 

His advisor’s office is on the fifth floor, and the elevator in the building is questionable at best. Mulder thinks it’s a conspiracy to make you all out of breath and sweaty so that you feel subservient to the higher ups, but then, Mulder thinks everything’s a conspiracy. Even still, he approaches his advisor’s door trying to stem his heavy breathing, and rapts on it three times in quick succession.

 

The door opens. His advisor is a bald, middle-aged man named Skinner who used to be in the service, and now spends his days telling dumb kids which classes they need to take to be on track for graduation. Skinner, who still carries his military background in his disposition, tends to regard Mulder with a perpetual sense of exasperation, with a dollop of resignation on top. When he sees Mulder outside his office, he gives a long-suffering sigh, even though he’s the one who requested the meeting in the first place.

 

“Thanks for coming,” Skinner says flatly, gesturing for Mulder to take a seat. The chair is just a little too close to the ground, which Mulder thinks is another tactic to enforce submissiveness. He folds his hands in his lap and waits for whatever this particular reprimanding will be about today.

 

(Prior reprimands have included: Interfering with the police investigation over the death of Patricia Borman; tacking unsolicited and non-university approved copies of the Gunmen’s zine on every bulletin board on campus (and in several bathroom stalls); climbing the roof of the Alpha Delta Chi house, and, after scaring the women half to death, being caught and accused of being a peeping Tom, and then insisting that he was only up there because he had been told there’d be a bizarre space anomaly that night and the sorority house had the least light pollution out of all the buildings on campus; getting way too drunk and standing outside the Student Union and screaming, “Elvis is alive and the government  _ knows _ about it!” before lapsing into a rather unfortunate cover of the Shaft theme song; one very lengthy argument about whether or not “the psychological effects of alien abduction” was appropriate material for independent study.)

 

“You’re probably wondering why I called you in today,” says Skinner, taking his seat across the desk from Mulder. His chair is normal height. Typical.

 

“Whoever’s been promoting the Long Island Medium’s visit to campus, I swear, it isn’t me.”

 

“No, no, that’s the Alternative Healing club who’s organizing that event,” says Skinner dismissively.

 

“And the school’s funding that? Sure, but when  _ I _ try and get that Bigfoot photographer to come speak—” 

 

“I didn’t authorize it, take it up with the club president. Listen, let’s not beat around the bush here, I pulled up your degree audit, and you are close to failing all of your classes.”

 

“Am I?” asks Mulder with mild interest. This is news to him—of course, he also can’t recall the last time he turned in an assignment, and he thinks he might have skipped at least two tests over the past few weeks, so it probably shouldn’t be coming as a surprise to him. 

 

“Yes, you are. Now, you and I may have had, er,  _ speed bumps _ along the way, but from the get-go you’ve always been a straight A student. You came to this school with IQ and aptitude tests that were off the charts, so I know this isn’t an issue of capability. If you wanted, you could probably fly through your undergrad half asleep the entire time, so you can see why I’ve become concerned over your latest performance. Is there anything going on in your life that’s going on that I should know about? That you want to talk about?”

 

Mulder’s eyes widen. “Oh no, this isn’t like a, ‘heart-to-heart’ type meeting, is it? Because forgive me, sir, but I am entirely too sober to handle that right now.”

 

“Look kid,” Skinner says, leaning back in his chair of proper height and adjusting his glasses sternly. (Mulder didn’t even know you  _ could _ adjust glasses sternly.) “If you repeat this, I’ll deny it, but I have a soft spot for you. But the rest of the faculty? Not so much. So far you’ve managed to evade expulsion, and let’s be honest, probably actual jail time, because you’ve got such impressive academic skill, but if that goes away? I can’t guarantee you that I’ll be able to keep the higher ups from riding you all the way out the door. You’ve just got too much of a reputation, and I’m just an advisor. 

 

“Now, what I  _ can _ do is help you get back on track. But in order to do that, I have to have at least some idea of what’s throwing you off the rails to begin with. Capiche?”

 

“Um, I guess so,” says Mulder, unfamiliar with interacting with academic professionals over his actual performance in academics.

 

“So what is it then? Some alleged local abduction got you distracted? Spending too many late nights with those computer hacker friends of yours? What?”

 

Mulder considers the question. To be perfectly honest, he had kind of just forgotten that school was a thing. In lectures, when he could be bothered to even attend, his mind was always elsewhere. But, rarely is it focused on the big conspiracy he’s working to unravel either, he realizes. He spends enough of his free time pondering that, he doesn’t need class time for it too. No, what he’s usually thinking about during class is Dana Scully.

 

And not just there. When the two of them do study sessions, he usually spends more time watching her read than doing any reading himself, and when he tries to study alone, the only thing he can focus on is the fact that she’s not there with him.

 

With growing horror, Mulder realizes that, for weeks now, his thoughts have been sectioned into only two things: What is going on with this government conspiracy thing, and does Dana Scully think I’m cute?

 

Without even noticing it was happening, Scully has infiltrated his mind. And not with the things he  _ should _ be obsessing over, like her cancer, or her connection to the other women he’s investigating. No, he thinks about how pretty she is, and how good she is in bed. And then he thinks about embarrassing things, like, “Does the sex  _ mean _ anything to her?” and even worse, “What  _ are _ we?” 

 

He has officially become  _ that person _ .

 

Relationship ambiguity has sent Mulder into a tailspin, and he’d been none the wiser.

 

“Well?” Skinner prompts after Mulder’s stewed in his shame for nearly a full minute without saying a word.

 

“I think,” he says slowly, “it has to do with this friend of mine. I’ve just been spending...a lot of time with her.”

 

There is a ringing silence. Skinner blinks at him.

 

“This is about a  _ girl _ ?” asks Skinner. Mulder frowns.

 

“Trying not to be offended by your incredulous tone, sir.”

 

“Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just...not what I expected. Your problems aren’t usually so...so  _ normal _ .” Mulder gives him a deadpan expression, and Skinner nods. “Right, sorry, so is it a, um, romantic relationship?”

 

“No,” says Mulder, too deep in his own humiliation to even pretend to have any dignity right now. “Or, yes? I don’t know. Maybe.”

 

“So does that mean you have feelings for her, but something’s preventing you two from going steady?”

 

“With all due respect, sir, nobody’s used the term ‘going steady’ for at least three decades.”

 

“Watch your cheek,” says Skinner. Mulder is mortified to see how entertained he appears to be. He much prefers being reprimanded, he decides resolutely. “Does she know how you feel?”

 

“Why do you assume  _ I’m _ the one who’s pathetic and pining and not the other way around?” Skinner doesn’t even bother to dignify this with a response. Mulder sighs. “Kind of.”

 

“Have you explicitly detailed what you want out of a relationship with her?”

 

“Aren’t you divorced?” asks Mulder. “Are you qualified to be giving relationship advice?”

 

“Widowed, your point is invalid, just answer the question,” Skinner says tersely. 

 

Mulder sighs again. “It’s complicated.”

 

“Is that a no?”

 

“You don’t have all the details. I mean, it is  _ genuinely complicated _ .” 

 

“So...no?”

 

He sighs a third time.

 

“Yeah, no.”

 

“Alright then,” says Skinner. “Then as your advisor, I’m advising you to have a healthy conversation about your relationship expectations.”

 

“Is that really within your purview, sir?”

 

“I’m an academic advisor. This is affecting your academics. Ergo, yes, it is.”

 

“I’m planning to break into a fertility clinic next week, wouldn’t you rather talk to me about that?”

 

Skinner opens his mouth, closes it, and pinches the bridge of his nose.

 

“You know what?” he says. “No, I wouldn’t. Dismissed.”

 

—-

 

“What’d the doctor say?” asks Mulder the moment he answers Scully’s knock on his door.

 

“Hello to you, too,” she says, shrugging off her jacket as she walks inside. She drapes it over the back of Mulder’s desk chair, and then turns to face him with her arms crossed. She’s come to learn that, even when they don’t mean to, the people who love you will become more obsessed with your illness than you are, and it’ll be exhausting.

 

“Sorry,” says Mulder sheepishly.

 

“S’okay,” Scully says, deflating a little. “Doctor didn’t say much; said I still have cancer, the state of which will be determined once my scans come back.”

 

One of her half truths. The doctor didn’t say much, but what she’s neglecting to tell Mulder is that what she  _ did _ say was that Scully’s new symptoms and increased malaise could very well be signs of her illness progressing. But Scully needn’t tell him that until she knows for certain. It’d be cruel to worry him for longer than necessary.

 

She wishes she didn’t have to worry him at all.

 

“Did you tell her about the dizzy spells?”

 

“Yes,  _ mom _ ,” Scully says pointedly.

 

“Okay,” Mulder relents. He had offered to go with her to her appointment, and Scully is still sick to her stomach at the thought of him seeing her so exposed. “Want to go get some dinner?”

 

“Yeah, in a bit. Can we lay down a while first? I’m a little tired. Don’t—” she adds the second she sees Mulder’s mouth open. “—ask me if I’m okay. I am. I’ve just been all over the place today, and it’s been a lot.”

 

“I was actually just going to ask you if you wanted to be the big spoon or the little spoon,” Mulder jokes, and Scully smiles in spite of herself.

 

She sits on the desk chair to undo the laces of her boots, and tosses them haphazardly somewhere in the vicinity of the door. She climbs up to Mulder’s bed, and slides into what’s become “her side” with a practiced ease. After a moment, Mulder slips in beside her, draping his arm over her hip and pressing her to him. She gets that rush of security she always gets when he holds her.

 

“What’d your advisor want to talk to you about?” she asks him, mindlessly lacing her fingers through his. 

 

“He wanted to know if I had any secret intel on the whereabouts of the real Elvis,” Mulder says. Scully snorts.

 

“And what’d you tell him?” she asks playfully, burrowing her head deeper into the pillow.

 

“I told him I was under strict orders not to tell, but that I could confirm that he’s safely hidden away with Tupac Shakur.” 

 

Scully laughs, and Mulder holds her tighter, pressing a chaste kiss onto her neck.

 

“What did he really want?” she asks after a moment.

 

“Eh,” says Mulder nonchalantly. “Turns out I’m close to failing all my classes.”

 

The smile slips from Scully’s face. She manuvers herself around so that she and Mulder are practically nose-to-nose on the tiny bed.

 

“What?”

 

“I’ve got it handled,  _ mom _ , don’t worry about it,” says Mulder. “Anyway, I was talking to the Gunmen, and they confirmed that they’re free next Wednesday, so I think the plan—”

 

“No no no no,” Scully interrupts. “Hold on a second, you can’t just say that and then change the subject.”

 

“Sure I can,” says Mulder. “It’s actually quite easy. Observe: I looked into the clinic’s business hours, and it looks like all the employees, including janitors, will be gone by nine pm. They’ve got a security system, of course, but it’s a simple one, nothing the boys can’t override.”

 

“Mulder,” says Scully sternly. “Since when are you failing your classes.”

 

“ _ Nearly _ failing,” Mulder clarifies. “And I told you, I’ve got it handled. I’ll turn in my missing assignments for partial credit, do my current ones, ace all my finals, and voilá. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

 

“You’re a straight A student,” Scully says.

 

“How would you know?”

 

“Because so was I and when I was cleaning my backpack out a few weeks ago I found your name on an old program I was given that has all the names of students who made honor roll.”

 

“Great, now people will know I’m a nerd.”

 

“Yeah, your reputation’s totally shot,” Scully deadpans. “You still haven’t answered the question.”

 

“You’re looking particularly sexy today,” Mulder says, his hand creeping towards Scully’s inner thigh. Scully grabs his wrist to still him, and looks at him with her lips in a thin, tight line.

 

“Did you really think that was going to work?” she asks.

 

“No, but I dared to dream,” Mulder replies, taking his hand back to neutral territory. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve been slacking off, that’s all. It’s my fault and I’ll fix it, no big thing.”

 

“But why have you been slacking off?” Scully asks with a sinking feeling. “Is it because of me? Because of this big, conspiratorial mess we’ve gotten into?”

 

“I can promise you it has nothing to do with the conspiratorial mess we’ve gotten into,” Mulder says.

 

“But it does have something to do with me?”

 

“I didn’t say that.”

 

“You didn’t not say it, either.”

 

“Scully, I’m telling you, this is no big deal. Can’t you just let me pull a you and avoid the conversation with copious boning?”

 

“It’s because of the cancer, isn’t it?” Scully says, clenching her eyes shut, cursing herself. “I told you, I fucking  _ told _ you it’d be toxic for you to hang around me, and now—”

 

“Scully, you’re lovely and I respect you, but please shut up. I promise it’s not about the cancer, either.”

 

“Then what is it? What’s been so consuming you’ve managed to tank all your grades? I haven’t even attended half my classes this semester, and I’m still maintaining a pretty solid B average.”

 

“No one likes a show-off, Scully.”

 

“ _ Mulder _ .”

 

Mulder groans, burying his face from view. “It’s embarrassing,” he says in a muffled voice.

 

“What could be so embarrassing that you can’t tell  _ me _ ?”

 

Scully watches Mulder’s shoulders heave heavily. After a moment, he resurfaces and looks her in the eye. “What are we, Scully?”

 

Scully blinks at him. Whatever she’d been expecting, it isn’t that. 

 

“What are...what?” she asks faintly.

 

“What are we?” Mulder says with a newfound burst of momentum. “Are we friends? Friends with benefits? Are we dating, or are we just friends who go on date like outings and sometimes cuddle? Lovers? Enemies? Acquaintances stuck inside some weird fever dream? Which one is it, Scully?”

 

Oh.  _ This _ conversation.

 

“Um,” Scully says, mind suddenly blank. She is now very cognizant of their bodies pressed up against each other, and Mulder’s hand loitering in the vicinity of her backside.

 

“If you don’t want to be anything more than, you know, fuck buddies or something, that’s fine,” Mulder rushes on. He’s actually blushing. Scully’s seen him talk to strangers about alien abductions with a completely straight face, but he can barely look her in the eye while asking her to define their relationship. “I can deal with it,” he continues. “I mean, don’t take that to mean I don’t want to be something more with you, because obviously I do, I doubt that one’s much of a surprise, but I don’t want you to think I’m pressuring you into something, it’s just...I dunno, Scully, I’d rather french Frohike than have this conversation, but the ambiguity is killing me.”

 

Scully is awash with guilt. “Have you really been so preoccupied with defining our relationship that you just stopped doing schoolwork entirely?”

 

Mulder cringes. “I told you it was embarrassing, Scully, you don’t need to rub it in. I know I sound like a pathetic pissbaby right now, trust me, I  _ know _ .”

 

“I don’t think you’re pathetic at all,” Scully says genuinely. “If anything, I think you’re a goddamn saint, putting up with me when all I’ve seemingly been doing is running you around in circles.”

 

“I don’t ‘put up’ with you, Scully,” Mulder says.

 

“I know, but—” but Mulder cuts her off.

 

“No, I don’t think you do, though. You know that day after we first met, when you came to get your jacket?” Scully nods. “I sat up here, in this bed, that whole morning, into the afternoon, hoping you’d come by just so I could prove to myself you were real. Because I knew you were special from the beginning, Scully, and not just because you’re hot, or because you treat me like a person instead of a walking reputation. It’s  _ you _ that I’m entranced by, Scully. It’s you that I love, and don’t freak out about the word love, the feeling’s been there for ages, maybe from the start,  just now it’s got a name, that’s all.

 

“And listen, Scully, I mean it, if you don’t want to  _ be with me _ be with me, because I’m not your type, or there are just too many cryptids involved in the job description, I get it. I’d rather have you as a friend than as nothing at all. But don’t...just promise me that you’ll make the decision based on how you feel intrinsically, and not how you feel because you’re dying and you’re afraid of hurting me.”

 

Scully has the sensation of the wind being knocked out of her. Nothing, not one word, of what Mulder’s said is news to her, but they’d been operating under the unspoken agreement to keep it all bottled for so long, that hearing it aloud is jarring.

 

And does Scully return the sentiment? She thinks it’s likely that she does, or would, if she let herself feel the full strength of whatever emotions Mulder dredges up inside her. But there’s a reason she keeps them on lockdown. Not feeling keeps her objective, and objectivity is key. She says,

 

“I can’t make you that promise, Mulder, because it’s not that simple.”

 

“But it is,” Mulder insists, but she shakes her head.

 

“Mulder, like it or not, my cancer is a part of this narrative, and to act on impulse without factoring in the ramifications is irresponsible at best, and irreparably damaging at worst. If I’m to succumb to this illness, I’m not going to let my last act in this world be taking you down with me.”

 

“So you’re saying no, we can’t be together?”

 

“I’m saying what I’ve been saying from the beginning—that I’m a liability, and I can’t afford the luxury of loving freely when my doing so can be so catastrophic.” 

 

“You keep making the decisions for both of us. I’ve told you time and again that I know what I may be setting myself up for. Why won’t you believe me when I say it’s worth it?”

 

“Because you’re not objective.”

 

“Who but me is to determine that?”

 

“Mulder—”

 

“Do you trust me, Scully?”

 

Scully sighs. “Of course, but that’s not the point.”

 

“It  _ is _ the point. Trust is everything, and if you really do trust me, then you’ll believe me when I say that I want to love you, in the narrative that’s being presented to me, no matter how it may end.”

 

“I don’t know how to make myself believe that,” Scully says in a small voice.

 

“Can you try?”

 

“It may take time.”

 

Mulder regards her for several long, painfully quiet moments. Finally, he nods.

 

“Then can I ask you to do your thinking elsewhere and come find me when you’ve decided?”

 

Scully’s heart skips a beat. “I—” she pauses; tries again. “Are you kicking me out?”

 

Mulder pushes her hair out of her eyes, before moving away from her entirely. He sits up, and she follows suit, dazed.

 

“I’m just asking you politely to give me some space, because being with you is too hard when it’s this grey.”

 

Scully doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing; just nods. She climbs down to the floor. Putting on her shoes and coat takes an agonizingly long time, and Mulder is pointedly not looking at her, which is worse than if he stared.

 

She heads for the door, and with her hand on the handle, she half expects Mulder to issue protest, but the protest never comes. She walks out the door silently, and doesn’t turn back.

 

—-

 

Mulder doesn’t text her for the rest of the week, and into the next. It’s so unprecedented that Scully can’t figure out how she’s meant to feel about it. She has the urge to feel affronted, but deep down she knows she’s the one in the wrong.

 

She wishes Mulder could just understand—she’d give him everything he’s asking for, but she’s crippled by fear; uncertainty.

 

But damnit if she doesn’t miss him.

 

The days go by in a haze. She goes through the motions so robotically that Monica takes her aside and asks her what’s going on, but Scully doesn’t even try and go for a half truth. She lies outright, telling her she’s fine, just tired, because admitting she may have screwed up the most significant relationship she’s ever had is too much to say aloud.

 

Then comes Tuesday afternoon. 

 

Her phone lights up, the caller ID showing the familiar number of the doctor’s office.

 

“Hello?” she says.

 

“Dana,” comes her doctor’s voice, and without her even saying anything else, Scully knows she’s not calling with good news.

 

“The scans came back worse, didn’t they?” she asks calmly.

 

“The cancer’s metastasized. It’s spread into the surrounding lymph nodes, and into the central nervous system, Dana, I’m sorry.”

 

She doesn’t feel anxiety. In fact, she doesn’t feel anything at all. She says clinically, “Do you recommend continuing my current course of treatment?”

 

“We’ll of course look into every possible avenue,” the doctor says as a way of saying no. “But I have to be honest with you, Dana, that the statistics are just not on our side. We may have to accept that we’re out of options.” 

 

And just like that her epitaph is written; expiration date set. She is going to die.

 

“Thank you,” she says. “Thanks for letting me know.” She hangs up the phone even though she can hear her doctor still speaking on the other end. She stares blankly at the wall in front of her.

 

She stands that way for who knows how long, without a single cogent thought. Suddenly, her phone vibrates in her hand, startling her. She blinks at the screen, and it takes her a minute to comprehend it.

 

Mulder’s texting her for the first time in an entire week.

 

_ are u still coming with us tomorrow? _ it reads. 

 

And like a levee breaking, all her emotions come rushing back. She collapses to the floor and cries.

 

—-

 

Mulder pulls up in his car outside her dorm building after nightfall. In the backseat, the Gunmen are crammed, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the tiny space, which is absurd, because it would make a lot more sense to put one of them up front, and put tiny Scully in the back, but Scully suspects that even with their relationship in an awful state of flux, Mulder couldn’t bring himself to not give Scully the seat that at this point has all but become ritual.

 

“Hi, Mulder,” she says carefully as she slides into the passenger side. He’s got bags under his eyes like he hasn’t had a proper sleep in days, and his hair’s disheveled.

 

“Hello, Scully,” says Mulder cordially.

 

“Turn up the heat if it’s gonna be that icy in here,” says Frohike from the middle seat in the back. 

 

“Shut up, Frohike,” both Mulder and Scully say at the same time. They catch each other’s eye and can’t help but to smile a little. For a split second everything feels like it’s back to normal, but then Mulder turns his head away from her, and she remembers that she hasn’t told him that her chance of survival is now at roughly 0%, and nothing is back to normal at all.

 

Scully clears her throat as Mulder peels away from the building and onto the road. “Someone want to fill me in on the plan?” All she had gotten out of Mulder the day before was, “We’ll come get you at 9, wear all black, do you still have your gun?”

 

“Well, first, we were told we were to give you this,” says Byers, reaching over Frohike with a pistol in his hand. He looks wary, as though the gun will shoot itself off. Scully’d told Mulder that she didn’t bring her weapon to campus, and he’d texted, “K, I’ll find u one.” 

 

“Er, thanks,” she says, glancing out her window as she takes it to make sure no one can see into the car, but the road is deserted as Mulder makes a turn onto a back-road highway. “Should I even ask if you got this legally?”

 

“No,” says Frohike, and Langly adds, “We like to pregame our felonies with other felonies.” 

 

“Right,” Scully mutters. She shifts around in her seat to find a way to slip the gun into her waistband.

 

“Gotta say, you pull off that accessory splendidly,” Frohike says. She glances at him and he winks. She rolls her eyes, and then catches Mulder tilting his head in agreement. At least his gun kink is still the same, she thinks.

 

“How about just telling me the plan?” she says shortly. 

 

“We did some investigating to get the place mapped out,” Langly says. “Breaching the security should be a cakewalk.”

 

“We don’t have any reason to believe there will be security beyond the system, but if there’s something odd going on there we can’t rule out the possibility that there may be added precautions in place to keep secrets safe, so we’ll feed you information with bluetooth,” says Byers. “We’ll also have an eye on the surrounding areas.”

 

Frohike adds, “That way, if there’s any trouble, we’ll hopefully be able to catch it before it catches you.”

 

“Okay,” says Scully. “And what exactly is it that we’re looking for?”

 

“Same thing we’re always looking for,” says Mulder, staring steadfastly through the windshield. “Anything out of the ordinary.”

 

—-

 

“Got it overridden, you’re good to go,” comes Langly’s voice in Scully’s ear. Mulder pulls open the door to the clinic, and the two of them slip inside as quickly as possible.

 

“I feel like James Bond,” Scully whispers as they peek down the hallway to make sure it’s deserted. 

 

“I had a spy phase when I was a kid,” Mulder whispers back. “Had my own spy kit and everything.”

 

“If only little Mulder could see himself now.” 

 

Mulder grants her a flash of a grin, before starting down the hall. They walk past an information desk, and come to a glass door that requires passcode clearance.

 

“Give us a second,” says Byer’s voice. Scully glances around her, feeling exposed. On the ceiling she sees a security camera pointed at them.

 

“I hope you guys got those cameras taken care of,” she says.

 

“What do you take us for?” asks Frohike. “Amateurs?” As if to prove his point, at that moment the door clicks open.

 

“This just looks like how you’d expect a fertility clinic to look,” Scully says. The place has the crisp, blinding whiteness of hospital walls, and it makes her stomach churn. Down the pathway there are patient rooms, and occasional offices. 

 

“Yeah, not a single thing out of place,” says Mulder flatly, pointing. Scully follows his gaze to a nameplate above one of the offices.

 

“Doctor Scanlon,” she reads. “That’s the doctor who was treating Penny. The one who disappeared.”

 

“Coincidence?” Mulder asks.

 

“I know how you feel about coincidences,” Scully says.

 

“Damn straight,” mutters Mulder. “Come on.” He beckons her to follow. In their ears, the Gunmen take turns giving them directions through the halls.

 

“There’s a door up ahead, but we can’t see what’s beyond it,” says Byers. 

 

“Authorized personnel only,” reads Mulder once they reach it. “Bingo. Get the lock open, guys.”

 

“Working on it,” says Frohike. “This one’s got tighter security around it.”

 

“Our monitors don’t go beyond the end of this hallway, Mulder,” comes Byers’ nervous voice. “We won’t be able to warn you if anything’s coming.”

 

“We’ll take our chances,” Mulder says, but he looks at Scully for approval. She nods once, and he nods back. The door comes open with a click, and they go inside.

 

“What’s in there?” asks one of the Gunmen, but Scully isn’t sure which one, as it comes out staticy and distorted.

 

“You guys are cutting out,” Scully says.

 

“What?” asks one of the Gunmen.

 

“Frohike, what’s going on?” asks Mulder.

 

“Mulder...Some kind...Interference,” is all they can make out before the line goes dead completely.

 

“Well that’s ominous,” says Scully, calmer than she feels.

 

“Want to turn back?” Mulder asks.

 

“After we’ve made it this far? We’ll be fine.” She lifts up her shirt to show the gun tucked into her waistband. Mulder grins.

 

“Alright, Miss Pre-med, let’s keep going.” 

 

Ahead of them is a dark set of stairs heading down. They follow them for several levels, until they’re surely far below ground. When they’ve hit the bottom, Scully leans against the railing and takes a couple deep breaths, a little dizzy.

 

“You okay?” asks Mulder, touching her shoulder, and her belly flutters, as it’s the first time he’s touched her since their argument.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine now. Let’s go.” She pushes herself up. Mulder hovers, uncertain, so she takes charge and starts walking down a narrow hall, and he has no choice but to follow.

 

“Up there,” Mulder says quietly, nodding towards a dim, green light filtering under a door. They exchange a glance, before mutually deciding ‘fuck it.’ 

 

The Gunmen won’t be able to unlock it, Scully realizes as they approach it, but it turns out the concern is unfounded, as when she puts her hand on the knob, it turns freely. She hesitates, before pushing it open. 

 

“...Whoah,” says Mulder after a moment. 

 

“...Yeah,” says Scully softly. “Mulder, this may be above our pay grade.”

 

Mulder lets out a snort. “You think?” he mutters, and steps inside. 

 

In front of them is what appears to be some sort of laboratory, with jars of indistinguishable substances on the shelves, medical tools hanging from nails on the walls, and beakers and measuring equipment in the corners. Not to mention, there are about a dozen giant tanks, filled to the brim with green liquid, crowding the room.

 

“Why do I feel like we just walked into Dr. Frankenstein's lab?” asks Scully, taking a tenuous step towards one of the tanks. “Oh God,” she whispers. “Mulder, I think these are  _ people _ .”

 

They gawk at each other, before Scully turns back and pulls down her sleeve over her hand so she can rub away some of the condensation on the glass. She leans down to examine the face of what appears to be a young boy. Suddenly, it moves, and Scully lets out a scream, and backs up right into Mulder’s arms.

 

“It’s okay,” he whispers to her, but he doesn’t sound so sure about that himself. He turns to the other tank behind him and wipes away the mist like Scully had done on the other. Scully regains her composure and examines this face as well. The features are all the same.

 

“These boys are identical,” she says, eyebrows creasing, fear being overshadowed by a sudden scientific curiosity. She turns on her heel and begins walking down the aisle of tanks. She regards each face closely, an anxiety welling inside her. Once she’s gone through five or six, she turns back to Mulder, who’s watching her with interest. 

 

“What is it?” he asks at what must be a completely aghast expression on her face.

 

“Mulder,  _ all _ of these boys are identical. A zygote can’t be naturally split this many times, I think what we’re looking at here is…” she trails off, not able to say it aloud, as it seems too absurd. Thankfully, Mulder knows where she’s going, and says it for her.

 

“Clones,” he says with awe. “Human clones. We’re  _ way _ above our pay grade.”

 

“It’s impossible,” Scully mutters.

 

“No it’s not,” says Mulder with mounting excitement. “The science is there.”

 

“But the moral implications, Mulder, even if the science had been perfected, no self-respecting scientist would do this without considering the human impact.”

 

“Maybe we’re not working with people who have self-respect,” Mulder says. “Come on, there’s another room over there.” 

 

Shocked to her core, Scully follows Mulder down the aisle, to yet another door. Inside it’s pitch black. Mulder gropes around for a switch, and when he finds it, a blinding fluorescent light illuminates several hundred metal drawers built into the walls. 

 

“What the Hell?” asks Scully.

 

“No clue,” says Mulder. He steps in ahead of her and starts scanning the wall. After a minute, he says, “Scully, look.” Scully comes over and sees that the drawer he’s discovered is labeled, “Hagopian, Betsy.” They exchange a significant look, before he pulls it open. 

 

A flush of cold air blows out. He reaches in and pulls out a small, cylindrical tube.

 

“What is it?” he asks. Scully takes it from him. In tiny, tiny print, it says, “Ova, sample #3.”

 

“I think...I think it’s Betsy Hagopian’s ova.”

 

“Her ova? As in her eggs?”

 

“Yes,” says Scully absently, a thought crossing her mind. She drops the tube back into Mulder’s hand and starts searching the walls. The labels are in alphabetical order, and she gets to the S’s with a sense of foreboding. She scans the area until her eyes fall to what she was hoping she wouldn't find.

 

“ _ What _ ?” comes Mulder’s voice from behind her, seeing what she’s found.

 

In front of her there’s a black, metal drawer with the label, “Scully, Dana.” 

 

Scully stands frozen as Mulder reaches around her to pull open the drawer. The same burst of cold air escapes and she shutters. Mulder reaches in a hand and takes out the same type of thin, cylindrical tube that they’d taken from Betsy’s drawer.

 

Scully was 17 when she was told she would never have children of her own. Like her cancer, she had thought it just a fluke of nature, a gene code in her body gone wrong, and she’d learned to accept it, because what was the point of holding a grudge over the body she was given? 

 

But now she sees red. Her barren womb, her cancer riddled brain, and ultimately her death, are not acts of nature at all. Something had been done to her,  _ someone _ had done something to her, and didn’t even grant her the dignity of her memories.

 

“I’ve been made their lab rat,” she mutters. Mulder stands, vacant, the evidence of her statement in the palm of his hand. Slowly, she takes it from him, holds it before her eyes, and then, without warning, throws it with all her might down onto the ground, where the casing shatters into a million pieces. 

 

“Scully…” Mulder starts, but she’s not finished. She reaches into the drawer and gathers the rest of its contents in her hands, and then chucks them across the room, broken glass spraying all across the floor. 

 

“I’m their lab rat,” she yells, yanking open the drawer next to her own. “No memories,” she shouts, throwing more tubes. “No consent.” Another drawer’s contents goes flying. “A room full of women who are nothing to these men but one half of the necessary ingredients.” 

 

“Scully, stop,” says Mulder, eyes wide, grabbing her raised arms by the wrist.

 

“Don’t you get it, Mulder?” she rages. “Do you see? I’ve been used to bastardize science. Those boys in the other room? The women in this room, they’re their mothers.  _ I’m _ their mother.” 

 

“I know, Scully, I know, and I’m not blaming you for being angry, I’m not, but you can’t do this here.” He’s still got hold of her arms, and the last thing she wants right now is a lack of control over her own body.

 

“Let go of me,” she says, voice quieter, but with more intensity than if she’d still been screaming. Mulder hesitates, and then lets her arms drop. The tubes still in her hands clatter to the ground. She heaves several breaths, and he watches her like a bomb that’s about to go off. “I don’t deserve this,” she says finally.

 

“No,” Mulder agrees full-heartedly, searching her eyes. She looks away.

 

“I’ve seen enough,” she says, heading towards the exit, glass crunching beneath her boots. Mulder follows her silently, past the tanks of science fiction turned reality, down the dark and narrow hallway, and back up the stairs that make Scully’s bones scream but she ignores it, refusing to accept weakness from an illness that was given to her against her will.

 

“We have a problem,” Mulder says, speaking for the first time when they reach the door that led them back into the clinic. “It locked behind us.”

 

Scully doesn’t even hesitate. “Move,” she says, pushing past him, pulling out the Gunmen’s pistol.

 

“Scully, are you sure that’s a good—” but before he’s even finished the sentence, she’s already fired the weapon at the keypad lock. It breaks apart, sizzles, and sparks, and she tries the door. 

 

“Not locked anymore,” she says flatly, pulling it open. They step back into the clinic, which seems like an entirely different world now. 

 

“Is that you guys?” comes Frohike’s anxious voice, the interference dissipating the moment they’re back on the right side.

 

“Yeah, we’re headed back your way,” Mulder says. “Scully, you coming?”

 

But Scully’s not listening. She’s staring at the door, and without giving herself time to think it through, she raises the gun, and starts shooting.

 

“What was that?” comes through the bluetooth, as Mulder yells, “Scully, what are you doing?”

 

She just continues to shoot, round after round, as though the door leading down to the lab represents everything that’s been done to and taken from her. She pounds holes into the metal, until the pistol clicks empty, and even then she pulls the trigger a few more times out of nothing but pure fury. She feels Mulder’s hand on her shoulder, and she shrugs it away.

 

“Now we can go,” she says, leaving the dented door behind her like a broken metaphor. 

 

—-

 

After dropping off the Gunmen off at their Volkswagon, they silently agree to go back to Mulder’s dorm. Mulder isn’t sure why, and he doubts Scully does either, but it feels like the thing to do.

 

The minute they get inside, Scully grabs him by the collar of his coat, pulls him close, and crushes her mouth against his. His body lights up like he’s just touched a live wire. For several beautiful seconds he lets himself be kissed senseless, until he’s forced to come back down to reality. They’ve just discovered actual, goddamn human clones, Scully murdered a door in cold blood, and they’ve still got stuff to work out between them, and none of these things can just be kissed away.

 

But when he pulls away to voice this, Scully clamps his mouth shut with her hand. She shakes her head fiercely.

 

“No,” she says. “Don’t say it, because you don’t need to. I’ve made my decision, and I want to be with you.”

 

“What?” Mulder says, muffled under her palm.

 

“I want to be with you,” she says again. “They can take away my body autonomy, they can take my memories, and they can even take my life, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting them take one more thing from me. There’s no way in hell I’m letting them take you.” 

 

Her hand drops to her side, and she stares up at him expectantly. His pulse is thrumming hard in his temples. There are a million things he wants to say, and a million more that he needs to say, and he can’t think of a single damn one. 

 

“Ok,” he says finally, stupidly. It’s enough for Scully. 

 

She grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him down to her. She explores his mouth so aggressively that Mulder thinks maybe everything can be kissed away after all. He’s faintly aware that she’s mumbling something against his lips, and after a moment he realizes it’s an apology.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she echoes over and over. He wraps his arms around her tight.

 

“Shh, baby, shh, there’s nothing to be sorry for.”

 

Her fingers flex against his skin, and she whispers, “I love you.”

 

And that’s the last straw. Scully tears away just long enough to get his jacket unzipped and pushed off his shoulders, and he does the same for her. Clothes begin flying off between passionate, desperate kisses. He presses up against her in every place he can, and still he can’t seem to get close enough to her. 

 

He lifts her up, and her legs wrap around his hips. He slams her against the wall and enters her just like that. She lets out a wealth of swears and obscene noises, and he makes them right back. 

 

A pounding suddenly comes from the other side of the wall, temporarily knocking them from their trance. 

 

“I’m trying to sleep here!” says a distant voice. It’s his dorm neighbor complaining about their loud love making, and Mulder could not care less about him if he tried.

 

“Fuck off, Keith!” Mulder yells back, and then recaptures Scully’s laughing mouth, and they fuck until they can’t remember anything but the way it feels to be one.

 

It’s a small, but powerful rebellion. There may be a hundred and one forces in the world trying to keep them down, but right now they’re nothing but kids in love, and Mulder thinks that, just maybe, they’re the real force to be reckoned with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are too many doors in fertility clinics. why do scully's scans take a whole week to be processed when they'd probably be done on the same day? the things we do for plot, my friends


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for a brief description of blood

About a week and a half later, Scully ends up in the ICU.

 

The day starts off normal enough, with Mulder hunched over his laptop, obsessively searching for answers, and Scully curled up like a cat on his bed, sleeping well past her usual wake-up time, breathing heavily with congestion she hasn’t been able to shake. 

 

When he’d asked her about her scan results, she’d given him a noncomittal answer about there being no improvement, but decidedly not saying if the cancer was getting worse, and because he didn’t know if he wanted to know, he didn’t ask. But since then, there’s been a noticeable decrease in her stamina, and he can’t help but wonder if there was more she wasn’t telling him.

 

He still can’t bring himself to ask. The problem is, now that he has her—like,  _ truly _ has her—the prospect of losing her is at an all-time high of incomprehensibility. 

 

Since their discovery at the fertility clinic, Mulder has been spending all his time alternating between three things: Doing research, doing homework, and doing Scully. (He’d be perfectly content to just do research and Scully, but she won’t stop insisting that if he fails this semester, she’ll die out of spite, just to teach him a lesson.)

 

But today is Saturday, yesterday was the last day of finals, they’re driving up to Annapolis tomorrow for Christmas Eve, and he hasn’t gotten his grades back yet, but he’s confident that he at least got all his grades above a C-. This means she’s permitting him to dedicate his whole day to searching for a cure, even though she gives him that  _ look _ every time he says he’s not giving up.

He won’t admit it out loud, but the truth is he hasn’t made much headway in the cure department. He’s dug deep into the lives of all the doctors’ names he can remember from the offices in the clinic, the Gunmen have provided him with every classified document on human cloning they can get their hands on, and he’s been trying to find the intersection between ova harvest and abduction, but while he’s definitely fascinated with his findings, none of it is what he’s looking for. Despite his efforts, Scully is still dying, and maybe faster than he wants to believe.

 

Because there have been clues, and not just the deflecting about scans. There have been signs that he has been refusing to read. They have sex regularly, but he has to do most of the work, because she just doesn’t have the energy. The other night, he woke up to her holding her nose, with spots on the sheets. Not to mention, she’s spent 80% of her time asleep. The only final she went to was physics, but slept through the rest, and when Mulder asked her if it was going to affect her schedule next semester, she just shrugged and said she wasn’t worried about next semester, and it wasn’t until later did Mulder entertain the idea that maybe she said that because she doesn’t intend to return.

 

And because he doesn’t know how to help, he continues to scour the internet for answers that may or may not be there. He’s more certain than ever that her cancer was given to her, and it follows that if it was given then it could also be taken away, but he doesn’t have the first clue on how an illness could be manufactured, let alone cured, and if he does finally figure it out, he’s worried it’ll be too late. 

 

Right now, he’s balls deep in a random woman’s blog, detailing her struggles with conceiving after discovering her infertility, just because she made a vague reference to a kidnapping years ago, and so far Mulder’s learned more than he ever cared to about in vitro fertilization, and has learned exactly nothing about human-concocted cancer. 

 

From up on his bed, he hears Scully stir. He tears his eyes from the post he’s reading about the connection between vaginal mucus levels and conception, to watch her unfurl from the ball she’s in, and stretch out with a series of cute noises that make him smile.

 

“Morning, sleepyhead,” he says affectionately. She peers down at him, eyes squinted and hair wild and splayed out across her face. 

 

“‘S’it still morning?” she mumbles.

 

“No, it’s well past one, but I didn’t get a chance to wish you a good morning when it actually still was, so I was just taking that opportunity.”

 

She smiles sleepily, pulling herself up into a sitting position, and the way she winces, Mulder thinks it’s taking a lot more effort than it should.

 

“How are you feeling?” he asks as casually as he can, knowing she never responds well to overt concern.

 

“Mm, sore,” she says, rubbing her elbow like an elderly person would rub arthritic joints. “I feel like I could sleep another twelve hours.” She moves her hand from her elbow to scrub at her groggy eyes.

 

She’d fallen asleep at nine the night before. He tries not to be concerned that she’s still exhausted after sixteen hours of sleep. 

 

“Your body needs the rest,” he says, Not Concerned. 

 

“Mm,” is all she says. She leans back, her head lolling back against the wall like an infant who hasn’t yet gained the neck strength to hold itself steady. Her eyes flutter open and closed, and she can’t seem to focus them.

 

“Hey,” Mulder says, letting a bit of genuine worry leak through, as he turns all the way around in his chair to face her. “Are you sure you’re okay?” 

 

“Yeah, just dizzy,” she mutters, her voice sounding slurred. Mulder furrows his brow. She blinks in his direction. “My eyesight is fuzzy,” she adds, sounding puzzled. 

 

“Do you need to see your doctor?” Mulder asks, alarmed. “Maybe I should take you. Are you able to climb down here?” 

 

“Dunno,” she says, pressing the palms of her hands against her eyes, and that in itself is a terrible sign. Scully not refusing a doctor’s visit outright is unheard of. Mulder gets to his feet.

 

“Here, let me help,” he says, coming over to the ladder and climbing halfway, holding out his hand. 

 

It takes her a minute to focus enough to take it, and she maneuvers towards the steps on her knees, shoulder bumping into the wall. Mulder helps her get her feet on the first step, and holds her by the waist while they take each consecutive step one-by-one. Getting her to the ground seems to take ages, and when he does, she wavers in place. He holds her by the shoulders to keep her steady. 

 

“I think you need to see a doctor, Scully,” he says, searching her face for anything else that seems off. The corner of her mouth is crusted in what looks unsettlingly like blood, like she might have been bleeding in her mouth. “Have you had blood in your saliva before?” he asks, his finger ghosting over her lips.

 

“A couple times this past week,” she says distantly, like she’s not quite here for this conversation.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks. 

 

“Didn’t want to worry—oh.” She stops mid-sentence, gaze falling to the floor. Mulder looks down too, to where droplets of blood are dripping like a rain shower onto the tile. His eyes immediately fly back up to her face, where her nosebleed is steadily gaining momentum. What starts as a trickle quickly turns to gushing, down the front of her chin, her shirt, and into an ever growing puddle on the floor, and Mulder forgets entirely about the blood in her mouth in exchange for sheer terror over the blood flowing out her nose. 

 

Instead of clapping her hand to her face to stem the bleeding, Scully lifts her dripping chin slowly to look at him. Her eyes, already unfocused, begin to cross, and without warning she slumps, almost falling to the ground if not for Mulder’s quick reflexes. 

 

“Scully!” he says, catching her by the armpits, and lowering her down gently onto the ground. Her mouth is slightly ajar, her eyes shut, and she doesn’t react to him, even as he yells her name and slaps her lightly on either cheek. He swallows a lump in his throat, positions her on her side so she doesn’t choke on the frankly terrifying amount of blood pouring out of her, and then pulls out his cell phone and calls 911.

 

“911, what’s your emergency?”

 

“My girlfriend’s hemorrhaging or something,” he says shakily, getting to his knees and cradling Scully’s head. 

 

“What do you mean by hemorrhaging, sir?”

 

“I don’t know if that’s what’s happening, I just know there’s a whole lot of blood; she’s losing a whole lot of blood.”

 

“Where is she bleeding?”

 

“Her nose. But this isn’t an ordinary nosebleed. Please send someone, she’s getting pale.”

 

“I’m seeing your location as the University campus downtown. Can you give me specifics?”

 

“Harper Hall, it’s just northeast to the student union. Room number 42.”

 

“I have an ambulance dispatched, now I want you to stay on the line and give me more information. Is she responsive?”

 

“No, but she’s breathing.”

 

“Was there an injury?”

 

“No, but she has cancer. I think this is because of her cancer.”

 

“What kind of cancer, sir?”

 

“I—um, it’s...Nasopharyangeal, I think is what it’s called.”

 

“Do you know what stage?”

 

“No. Late, I think. I think she’s…” he trails off.

 

“You think she's what, sir?”

 

“I think she’s dying.”

 

The ambulance arrives approximately ten minutes later. 

 

“You need to get out of the way,” one of the EMTs says, shuffling in between him and Scully, and he moves back reluctantly, watching her with a blank expression as they swarm her. They strap various contraptions all over her, take her vitals, do a count, and lift her onto a gurney in a single, swift motion. They start to roll her away, and Mulder’s feet follow involuntarily.

 

“Can I ride with?” he calls out to them. They just shout back the name of the hospital as they load her into the elevator. There’s not enough room for him to join them, so he watches helplessly as she disappears behind the doors.

 

He takes several deep breaths, and when he turns around, he sees an entire floor of students peeking their heads out of their rooms, staring at him. Their scrutiny feels almost accusatory, and several regard him from head-to-toe, frightened, and that’s when he realizes the entire front of his clothes are coated in blood. Scully’s blood. He stalks back to his dorm silently, refusing to acknowledge the stares, and inside, his floor resembles a crime scene. He thinks he might vomit.

 

But he can’t. Scully needs him, he thinks resolutely. He doesn’t give himself time to think. He pulls out a duffle bag buried under various knicknacks in his closet, and throws in an assortment of Scully’s clothes, some of his, and whatever practical thing he can think of, like phone chargers and his wallet, and he shoulders the bag. 

 

He finds Scully’s mother’s number in his contacts, which Scully had given him in case of emergency, and he had hoped he’d never need to use it. He dials it now. 

 

“Mrs. Scully?” he says when she answers. He leaves his room and walks past the whispering crowd of ever-growing students in the hallway.

 

(“They took the girl from Spooky’s room.” “Do you think he did something to her?” “Is he covered in  _ blood _ ?”)

 

“I need you to come up to DC...No, she’s not, and she’s going to need you here.”

 

—-

 

Scully wakes up to the sound of her heartbeat being filtered through a monitor. With eyes still closed, she takes a moment to listen. It’s a steady, comforting pulse, reminding her that’s she’s not gone; not yet.

 

She peeks through half-lidded eyes, and the lights aren’t on, but the room isn’t dark. There’s daylight filtering in from a window somewhere nearby. Beneath her is an unfamiliar bed, with thin sheets and a flat pillow. She knows she must be in the hospital, but she doesn’t remember why.

 

“Hey,” comes a voice to her left. She turns her heavy head over to see Mulder sat on a plastic chair beside her. He looks a wreck, all stiff and disheveled, like he might have slept there. He takes her hand in his. She’s got a device clamped to her index finger, monitoring her pulse. He smiles gently. “Merry Christmas.”

 

She furrows her brow. “It’s not Christmas yet,” she says, and is surprised at how scratchy and unused her voice sounds. “Is it?”

 

“Afraid so,” Mulder says, bending down to press a chaste kiss against her knuckles. His lips are so warm on her frigid hand. “Not the ideal place to deck the halls, I know, but I’ve definitely have holiday cheer hearing your voice.” He says it casually, but an underlying tremor in his syntax makes her wonder if he was worried he wasn’t going to ever hear it again.

 

“Are we in Annapolis?” she asks, trying to piece together the events that led her here. She sees it in flashes. Mulder’s bed. Feeling dizzy. Blood.

 

“DC,” he says, shaking his head. “Your family’s here, though. Your parents and I have been taking shifts. They’re down in the cafeteria right now, and Melissa is getting some rest back at the hotel. BIll and Tara are flying in this afternoon.”

 

“He wasn’t going to be able to make up for Christmas this year.”

 

“Yeah, well he managed to finagle some leave time for his baby sister,” Mulder says, reaching over and pushing her hair behind her ear like he loves to do. Scully frowns. She suspects he told his superiors he had to go to Washington to watch his sister die. She decides not to voice this. 

 

“I slept through Christmas Eve,” she says instead. 

 

“You were up off and on throughout the day,” Mulder tells her, massaging her palm. “You weren’t very coherent, though, so I’m not surprised you don’t remember. But you’re doing way better today. They moved you from the ICU this morning.”

 

“What happened? Why was I in the ICU?”

 

“You lost a lot of blood, and went into hypovolemic shock,” Mulder says softly. A tensing in his jaw betrays him, and she realizes he had been with her when it happened.

 

“You had to see that,” she says, hearing the distant sound of EMTs talking briskly over her like a ghost of a memory. “That must have been terrible.”

 

“Yeah, well you had to live it,” Mulder says, his gaze not quite matching hers.

 

“I’m sorry,” Scully says, and Mulder shakes his head adamantly.

 

“It’s not your fault, don’t apologize.”

 

“I didn’t tell you though,” she says, tears threatening to fall. 

 

“Didn’t tell me what?”

 

“About the cancer,” she says, and it comes out more like a breath of a whisper. Weak beyond measure, she doesn’t have her usual resolve to keep up her guards, and her chin quivers as her eyes spill over. “It’s metastasized, my doctor told me,” she tells him, voice crumbling with cracks. “It’s in my central nervous system now, and there’s nothing else she can do. I’m sorry, so sorry, I should have told you, but I couldn’t find the words.”

 

Mulder regards her, drinking her in like he’s memorizing her face, and nods sadly.

 

“You don’t have to apologize, baby, I think i knew even without you telling me,” he whispers. He doesn’t cry, but when he inhales there’s a hitch in his breath. Scully cries for the both of them. He lifts up from the chair to bend over and place a gentle kiss on her lips. He then buries his face in her hair. “We’re going to be okay.”

 

He doesn’t mention conspiracies or cures. He doesn’t tout the certainty of a miracle. He doesn’t tell her there’s still a chance he will save her. Even still, she is soothed. She trusts him with everything she has to give, and if he says it’s going to be okay, then it’s going to be okay, no matter what the ending turns out to be.

 

“Dana,” comes her mother’s voice at the door. Mulder pulls away from her, and Scully immediately misses his touch.

 

“Hi, mom,” she says, wiping her eyes quickly. Her mother’s lower lip trembles as she enters the room, Scully’s father at her heels. 

 

“I’ll let you guys have some time alone,” Mulder says. Scully casts him a look that says, ‘don’t go,’ and he sends her one back that says, ‘don’t worry, I’ll be back.’ She nods at his silent promise, and turns her attention to her mother’s arms cradling her like she were a child, while Mulder slips out the door and out of sight.

 

—-

 

“Do you believe in God, Mulder?” Scully asks him. 

 

He’s wrapped around her back tightly, his legs hanging off the edge of the tiny hospital bed. He’s sure he’s in for an earful when the nurse comes by for a vitals check in an hour or so, but he can’t be made to care. He intends to hold her as much as possible for as long as he can.

 

“I don’t know, but I’m sure that whatever is or isn’t out there, it’s nothing to be afraid of,” he says quietly into her neck.

 

“You can tell me the truth, Mulder, I’m not asking because I want reassurance, I’m asking because i want to know,” Scully says. Her body rattles as she speaks, and he can feel the outline of her ribs through her hospital gown, and he wonders how she had managed to become so unabashedly  _ sick _ without him noticing.

 

Probably, he realizes, because he had refused to see.

 

“I never have really entertained the idea, no,” he tells her. He feels her nod.

 

“Huh,” she says, and says nothing else.

 

“Does that surprise you?”

 

She hesitates, thinking. “A little,” she admits. “With everything else you believe exists, it seems a little cynical to not to think of God as one of them.”

 

“It’s stereotypical, but I think I’ve just seen too much bad to believe in a benevolent God, and there’s not much point in believing in a malevolent one.” Scully coughs a few times into her pillow. Case and point, thinks Mulder.

 

“What about all the good?” she asks when she’s recovered.

 

“I’m not sure if it makes up for it. If it’s supposed to be a balance, then I think the scale needs to be recalibrated.” 

 

“Mm,” Scully mumbles, in neither agreement or disagreement. 

 

“What about you?” Mulder asks, tracing a finger around the fine, gold chain around her neck. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be a skeptic. What do you believe?”

 

“I don’t know what I believe,” she whispers after a long silence. “I have my doubts, but…”

 

“But,” Mulder prompts.

 

“But I don’t know. I always found a sense of peace within the church, and I think there may be a nasty irony in that when I should be asking for help from God the most, I’m the most distant I’ve ever been from Him.” 

 

“If God exists, Scully, He’s not going to turn His back on you because you have doubts. You’re too good of a person to be cast away that easily, that much I know for certain.”

 

“I just don’t know how to reconcile my science and my suffering with my faith,” she says. “I guess I just…” She shakes her head, clearly lost.

 

“You want to believe,” Mulder says. She lets out a huff of a laugh. He smiles and places a kiss on a small strip of exposed skin on her neck. “Me, too,” he whispers.

 

They lay in the quiet for some time. Scully breathes heavily out of her mouth, and Mulder thinks she’s fallen asleep, until she asks suddenly, “Mulder, will you tell me a story.”

 

“What kind of story?” he asks her.

 

“The story of us,” she says. “The story of the life we could have led if we’d had the time.”

 

Mulder’s heart shatters. “Scully…”

 

“Please?” she asks, so quietly he almost misses it. “I want to have a chance to live it, even if it’s just in my imagination.”

 

Mulder sighs, and says nothing for a long while.

 

“You’re a doctor. The best one in the state, like, everyone wants to come and be treated by you, because you know your stuff, but you’ve also got heart. No matter what they’re facing, your patients always feel safe when they’re with you.”

 

“What about you? What do you do?”

 

“Me? I’m out looking for the Truth. Maybe I’ve infiltrated the government and have become an inside agent. Maybe I’m a crazy recluse all the neighbor kids are afraid of; a conspiracy theorist blogger who mooches off his wife’s six figure salary.”

 

“Oh, so we’re married?” she asks, and he can hear the smile. “How’d you convince me of that one?”

 

“It was touch and go there for a while,” Mulder says. “But after awhile you realized that no one else would look you in the eye because you made the mistake of associating with Spooky Mulder, and decided that settling was way easier than trying to rebuild your reputation.” Scully shakes with laughter in his arms. “It’s not too bad. I give decent head, and always let you have the extra French fries at the bottom of the takeout bag.”

 

“Sounds like my ideal relationship,” Scully agrees. “Where do we live? An apartment?”

 

“No, we bought a house.”

 

“What’s it look like?”

 

“Unremarkable. Everything else in our life is so damn bizarre, we decided a simple house would give us some much needed stability.”

 

“Is it in the city?”

 

“Nah, it’s on the outskirts. We own a bit of land, and for a while we entertained the idea of animals, but we can’t even keep a garden alive, so instead we just take turns on the riding mower when the grass gets too long.”

 

“I never did have a green thumb.”

 

“I know, me either.”

 

“Do we have any kids?”

 

Mulder hesitates. “Yeah,” he says. “I wasn’t sure about it at first, because I wasn’t convinced I’d be great at the whole parenting thing, but eventually I realized that I could be a total trainwreck, and the kid would grow up to be nothing less than perfect, because they had you as a mother. When we did finally reproduce, you showed me the ropes, and it turns out I’m not too bad at it after all.”

 

“What are they like?”

 

“The kid? Oh, they are the complete opposite of unremarkable. They have your smarts and beauty and your stubbornness, and they have my imagination and my belief. Unfortunately, they also have my nose. The combination is nuclear. The world doesn’t know what to do with a kid like ours.”

 

“Do we still go on monster hunts?”

 

“Oh, for sure, are you kidding? It’s what we do for family bonding time. The kid’s first word was ‘alien.’ Every Saturday, we cram ourselves inside the Chevy, and go looking for the fantastic.”

 

“Surely we’ve upgraded to a car that has manual transmission?”

 

“Sorry, Scully, it’s my story. The car stays.”

 

“Did you at least fix the gas gauge.”

 

“Please, the risk of getting stranded out in the middle of nowhere is part of the experience. We ran out of gas out on highway 77 one night, and I told the kid about how, when we were kids ourselves, you and I got stranded in the same way, and when I saw you under starlight, I knew I was a goner.”

 

There’s a pause. Scully sniffles and Mulder doesn’t think it’s from congestion.

 

“What else?” she whispers.

 

“Not much else to tell. We’re the perfect little family. A handful of social outcasts who are content to live in their own world, where they’re driven by the search for the answers to the Universe.”

 

“And by love,” Scully adds softly. Mulder grips her hand tight against her belly.

 

“And love,” he agrees. “More than you could ever know.”

 

—-

 

In the dark, Scully sits alone. 

 

Moments of solitude have been far and few between, what with Mulder, her parents, and siblings filtering in and out like a revolving door. She hasn’t minded, as being alone means being alone with her thoughts, but tonight she’s thankful for it.

 

She pulls herself up into a sitting position. It takes all her strength to do it, and she wonders at what point her body succumbed this far. She can’t pinpoint a moment. Dying is so bizarre.

 

She claps her hands together on her lap, fingers laced. She closes her eyes.

 

“It’s been a while since we last spoke,” she says quietly to the empty darkness. “And I hope you can forgive me for nearly submitting to the waver in my faith. This has tested my resolve, but I know now that you wouldn’t give me anything I couldn’t handle, and through this knowledge, I’ve found the strength to face whatever is to come.

 

“I apologize for speaking to you now in request, but perhaps you will take solace in the fact that it’s not for myself. Or maybe it is. But all altruistic acts have a hint of selfishness encompassed within them, don’t they?

 

“Lord, I’ve accepted my fate, but what I ask of you now is for you to protect them.

 

“For my mother and father, I ask that you give them the same strength you’ve given me, in order for them to move past their loss and continue to live. 

 

“For Melissa, please continue to encourage her to find inner peace with her beliefs, so that when her time comes, she may face the end fearlessly in a way I admit I cannot.

 

“For Bill and Charlie, please help them filter the fierce protectiveness they always showed me towards their own children, so that the wealth of love they have never goes to waste.

 

“And for Mulder...For him, I ask that you convince him that there was nothing he could have done to save me. Please don’t let him wander through life with unwarranted bitterness or guilt. Please guide him through his journey for the Truth, in hopes that he might find the answers he so desperately seeks. And remind him whenever the darkness consumes him, that wherever he goes, all the way to the end of the Universe, my love will follow him, and never waver.

 

“...Amen.”

 

—-

 

Mulder walks through the hospital parking garage to his car. He’d been reluctant to leave, but the stench of his unchanged clothes was beginning to reach unreasonable levels, and he could desperately use a shower. Scully promised him she’d still be there when he returned, and he tries to convince himself she’s right.

 

He is mentally, physically, and psychologically exhausted to his core. His legs guide him through the garage while he’s in a daze. He gets to his beat-up Chevy and, keys jangling in his hand, pauses before it, staring into the empty passenger seat and imaging the would-have-been Scully sitting inside, cheeks plump and face bright, instead of hollow and grey.

 

The sound of footsteps knocks him out of his thoughts. He whips around and is startled to see a man approaching him. Except, it’s not just a man. 

 

“Alex Krycek,” Mulder says, recovering quickly from his momentary lapse. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this, people will say we’re in love.”

 

Krycek smiles absently. He saunters over wordlessly, until they are face-to-face.

 

“What do you want?” Mulder asks him, for once entirely not in the mood for cryptic exchanges of secrets in the dark.

 

“I just came to ask,” Krycek says casually, “if you’ve found the cure for Scully’s cancer yet.”

 

Mulder sees red.

 

“There is no cure,” he says icily. “There never was. You led me on a chase with a dead end, and I’m starting to suspect you did it on purpose, although I can’t work out what you could possibly gain from running me in circles and playing with her life.”

 

Krycek shakes his head. “You’ve got it all wrong, brother,” he says, leaning against Mulder’s car, crossing his arms. “I led you right to the answers. I know you saw what was in the clinic.”

 

“Yes, and as soon as I get the chance, I’m going back there and destroying every inch of the place, even if it lands me in prison or dead or whatever.”

 

“I didn’t take you one for vengeance.”

 

“Then you’re not very perceptive.” 

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Krycek says, tilting his head. “The clinic’s gone. Burned to the ground, in fact, and anything that may have been inside it is long gone by now.”

 

Mulder sets his jaw, but doesn’t say anything. Internally, however, he fumes, sick to death of having just snippets of the information before it’s once again taken from him.

 

“So I’m taking it from your response that you haven’t found the cure yet, then,” says Krycek, pulling the conversation back.

 

“I already told you, there’s no cure to find.”

 

“And I already told you, there is.”

 

“What is it then, huh?” shouts Mulder, throwing his hands up in the air. “Why not just tell me instead of trying to get me to solve your riddles? I’ve been through every database, every name, every confidential file I could get my hand on, and nothing has even touched the surface of what could have caused Scully’s cancer, let alone cure it, so I’ve run out of options here, Alex. If you want me to find this supposed cure, you’re going to have to start talking in specifics.”

 

“I didn’t send you to the clinic to find the cure. I sent you there so that you could see what they’re capable of; so you could see that manufacturing cancer is just one of a million things they can do. You’ve been looking in the wrong places for answers.”

 

“Then tell me where I’m supposed to look,” says Mulder, all fight gone. He’s just too tired.

 

“You’re making it too complicated. You’re searching for answers you already have. You’re looking for something that you already have. Cause and effect, Mulder, that’s what these victims have in common. Follow that lead, and it’ll take you to your cure.” 

 

Krycek pushes himself up off of the car and begins to walk away, but Mulder shoves him back hard, and pins him against the car.

 

“Enough with the cryptic bullshit. Give me a straight answer for once,” he spits.

 

“I’ve told you enough,” says Krycek.

 

“Is this how you get your thrills, Alex? Does it get you going, taking us on three-sixty turns and leaving us empty handed?” 

 

“This is just the way the game works, Mulder,” Krycek says simply. “You say too much, and the wrong people will find out. I’m trying to keep my life  _ off _ the line, here. But I’ve given you enough. Use your goddamn head.” He pushes up, knocking Mulder back. He dusts off his shirt with a look of disgust. “I wouldn’t take too long, though,” he adds. “Time is not a luxury you have.”

 

And Mulder watches him walk away, heart thrumming in his throat.

 

Was it true he already had Scully’s cure? 

 

But where?

 

—-

 

“I need to go back home to gather some more changes of clothes, and some of your things,” Mrs. Scully is saying, wringing her hands, standing over Scully’s bed. It’s been five days since Scully first went into the hospital, and her prognosis has not improved, and has, in fact, done the opposite, and Mulder doesn’t blame Mrs. Scully for not wanting to leave her daughter’s side. Lord knows he never wants to.

 

But he can’t handle the look of fear on Mrs. Scully’s face, as though if she turns from her baby for one second she’ll slip away. Bill had to go back to San Diego for a couple days, Melissa had to go to work, and Mr. Scully had an appointment. 

 

“I can go up to Annapolis for you, Mrs. Scully, if you’d like,” he offers. She looks to him.

 

“You don’t have to do that, Fox,” she says, but her eyes dart back to her daughter’s gaunt face and she wrings her hands faster.

 

“Dana needs her mother,” he tells her softly. 

 

“Oh.” She lets out the syllable like a single sob. “Alright, that’s fine, thank you. Let me write up a list of things for you to grab.” 

 

She turns to rustle through the crowded bedside table, searching for a notepad and a pen. While her back is turned, Scully meets his eyes and gives him a silent thank you. Mulder nods. Mrs. Scully needs to stay with her daughter, and Scully needs her mother strong. 

 

“I’ll be back soon; the evening at the latest,” he says after Mrs. Scully’s handed him a substantial list of items. He hesitates, awkward under Mrs. Scully’s gaze, before throwing caution to the wind and going over to kiss Scully gently. “I’ll be back soon,” he reiterates, this time only to her. 

 

“I’ll be here,” she says, smiling weakly up at him. He gives her hand a squeeze, and heads out before he changes his mind.

 

—-

 

It didn’t occur to him at the time that being alone in Scully’s parents house and looking through their things would be incredibly uncomfortable, and yet here he is.

 

He gets the worst part over with first. He goes into Mr. and Mrs. Scully’s bedroom and rifles through their drawers, gathering clothes rather haphazardly.  _ Please no weird sex things _ , he begs silently. 

 

He escapes mostly unscathed. There was a close call there for a minute, but what he thought was a vibrator, he’s pretty sure was actually a back massager. Or at least that’s what he’s going to assume for the rest of his life.

 

Her parents’ things stuffed inside a duffle, Mulder goes down to Scully’s own room. 

 

He didn’t get a good opportunity to appreciate her room when he was here last. Usually, when they were in there it was dark, and they were either sleeping or were otherwise occupied. He looks around it now, and is flushed with warmth at how quintessentially Scully the whole place is. 

 

She doesn’t have much on her walls, except for a periodic table poster and some abstract art. The walls are a simple beige, and the furniture is a modern set made of oak. Underneath her punk rock persona, Mulder thinks that Scully may actually be a woman of classy taste. He imagines that she would have been quite intimidating in professional attire, if she could have been given the opportunity. 

 

Mulder swallows the acidic taste in the back of his throat. When had he started thinking of Scully as already gone? 

 

He takes a moment to compose himself, and checks the list. Most of what Scully wants are just pictures, and a few home comforts, like her blanket, and a tube of scented lotion so she “doesn’t have to smell like hospital,” she’d said.

 

From atop her dresser, Mulder picks up a picture frame, containing a photo of Scully and Melissa. If he had to guess, he’d say Scully was about early high school age. Her smile goes from ear to ear, as she hugs onto her older sister, and Mulder is awash with sudden emotion.

 

He sits the picture back down and sits on the bed, taking in breaths. 

 

It’s too much, he thinks. Not just Scully’s cancer, but all of it. Melissa is going to lose her sister, just like he lost his, and even though she won’t know it, there will be the same unanswered questions surrounding the why of it all.

 

This is why it’s hard to believe in God, he thinks, answering Scully’s question too late. But it’s true. He feels like his whole life is nothing but mysteries encircling him, with him stuck in the middle, being blindsided with losses he can’t even grieve because he doesn’t understand why he’s lost them to begin with.

 

His sister.

 

His father.

 

The love his life.

 

He scrubs at his wet eyes, and then picks up a pillow off the bed and chucks it at Scully’s vanity, knocking a bowl full of small knick knacks off it, onto the floor. He sighs, and mumbles an apology to Scully that she can’t hear.

 

He goes over and starts picking up her things, when he comes across something he can’t identify. He frowns, and picks it up. It’s a small, glass vial. He holds it up to get a better look. It’s full of a clear liquid that looks like water or saline, and at the bottom he can just make out a tiny black dot. He rolls the vial around in his hand, trying to read the label. It has Scully’s name on it, and a series of numbers that look like an ID, like what would be on a hospital bracelet.

 

It never occurred to him that when she got her chip removed that she might have kept it.

 

_ You’re looking for something you already have, _ Kryceks words echo inside his head. 

 

He regards the vial, mind going a mile a minute. Finally, he pockets it, throws the rest of the items on the list into the duffle, and gets back on the road, but not towards the hospital. An hour or so later, he pulls up in front of the Gunmen’s house.

 

“I need you to tell me what this is,” he says, in lieu of a greeting, holding the vial out to Frohike, who takes it and gives it a once over. He looks back up to Mulder.

 

“Come on in.”

 

—-

 

“It’s a computer chip with encrypted data on it,” says Byers, eyes fixed on the desktop screen. He punches some keys, and something else pops up.

 

“What’s that?” asks Mulder urgently.

 

“It looks like DNA code,” Byers says. “You said Scully found this implanted in her?” He looks to Mulder over his shoulder, who nods.

 

“And her cancer developed after she had it removed. That’s how it happened with the other women, too. Is that’s her DNA encrypted on it?” 

 

“If it is, then there’s an anomaly. This DNA is branched.”

 

“Meaning what?”

 

“Meaning a number of things. Possibly identification. Possibly as a means of control. Possibly as just a waste product left behind from some sort of test.”

 

“Do you think something like this could cause an illness like the one Scully has?” 

 

Byers considers the question, and shakes his head slowly in uncertainty. “I suppose it’s possible in theory to manufacture cancer using this sort of technology.”

 

Mulder’s heart skips a beat.

 

“What about to cure it?”

 

Byers looks even more unsure.

 

“Honestly, Mulder, after all we’ve seen here in the past few months? I wouldn’t call anything impossible.”

 

—-

 

“Come again,” says Scully. She’s got her eyes trained on Mulder, brows knit tightly together, while he waves the vial that holds the chip she removed from her neck in front of her. 

 

“I think this might be the answer, Scully,” he says. “What’s the thing about the onset of your disease you and all the women have in common? You got your chip removed. Cause and effect.”

 

“ _ If _ the removal of the chip did cause cellular mutation—and that’s a big if, Mulder—what makes you so sure that putting it back will cause the cancer to regress?”

 

“I can’t say for certain that it will,” Mulder admits. “But Alex Krycek cornered me in the parking garage here the other day, and told me that we already have the cure.”

 

“Oh, well if Alex Krycek said it was true…” Scully raises an eyebrow, and Mulder sighs.

 

“I don’t trust him anymore than you do, but he was right about the clinic, wasn’t he?”

 

“Right about what, exactly? He purposely told us nothing about what we’d find there. He’s been deliberately vague the whole time. If he wanted you to think the chip was a cure, why didn’t he just say so? The odds of you making that connection; if you hadn’t found it by accident in my room…”

 

“But I did, on both accounts, and it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

 

“It doesn’t make any sense at all, Mulder.”

 

“What have you got to lose?” he asks desperately. Scully sighs, turning her head and looking out the window where a light snow is falling.

 

“My dignity, for one,” she says, turning back and meeting his eye. “They put that in me for a reason. Putting it back seems a lot like letting them win.”

 

“Letting them win would be letting you die, Scully,” says Mulder resolutely. She closes her eyes and rubs her temples. Mulder’s hand finds her wrist and pulls it down gently, lacing his fingers through hers. He whispers, “Save your life first, Scully, fight the man second.”

 

She blows a stream of air out slowly through puckered lips. She opens her eyes and stares at his face, which is flooded with love for her. Who is she kidding, she hasn’t been able to say no to him yet, why would this be any different.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

—-

 

She fingers the bandage on the back of her neck, grimacing, still uncertain in her decision. Her doctor had been bewildered at her request, and had made Scully sign a liability contract to rid the hospital and herself of any negative consequences, and Scully couldn’t blame her, because what the Hell kind of science fiction was she touting.

 

But done is done, and now she waits. It’s early evening on New Year’s Eve, and Mulder is sitting with her as a nurse draws blood from her to check to see if there’s been any improvement. She doesn’t say it to Mulder, but she’s not holding her breath.

 

“The doctor will come see you in the morning after this has been processed,” the nurse says kindly as she slaps a piece of cotton and a bandaid over the crook of Scully’s elbow.

 

“Thanks,” she mutters.

 

“How do you want to celebrate New Year’s Eve, Scully,” Mulder asks, taking hold of her hand possessively, as though the nurse had been hogging it. Scully smiles.

 

“Let’s go to New York and watch the ball drop,” she says.

 

“Hm, don’t know if I can get you to New York by midnight,” says Mulder, playing with her fingers. “ _ But _ , I can offer you a movie and plenty of hospital jello, and then a very nice midnight kiss as we watch the ball drop on TV.”

 

Scully laughs. “Sounds perfect,” she says.

 

“Good. What are we watching?”

 

“What do you want to watch?”

 

“ _ Caddyshack _ ?” Scully wrinkles her nose. “Fine, party pooper, what do you want to watch?”

 

“ _ The Exorcist _ ?” she suggests, and Mulder appears skeptical. “Oh come on, what’s wrong with  _ The Exorcist _ ?”

 

“I watched it too young, and the staircase scene gave me nightmares for years, so I’ve never watched it since.”

 

“Big baby,” says Scully affectionately, pouting. “What’s a compromise, then?”

 

“Hmmm,” says Mulder in thought. “ _ Silence of the Lambs? _ ”

 

Scully grins wide. “Excellent choice,” she says.

 

Mulder gets his laptop set up on the table beside the bed, and then climbs in next to her, wrapping her up in his arms. She could live here forever, she thinks. She isn’t sure if she’ll ever see anything but the inside of this hospital again, but as long as he’s holding her, she’s home.

 

“Clarice Starling reminds me of you,” Mulder whispers in her ear about twenty minutes into the movie. Scully considers the character of Clarice, bold and assertive even within her insecurities.

 

“That’s quite the compliment, but I’m not sure I see the resemblance,” she says.

 

“Then you’re not paying attention,” Mulder says. “Smart, principled, stubborn as hell, not to mention, friends with weirdos. You’re basically the same person.”

 

“Maybe I should go into the FBI,” she says with a yawn. She snuggles in closer to Mulder.

 

“I’ll go with you. We’ll be partners.”

 

“Aren’t there rules about fraternizing with your coworkers?” she asks sleepily, reveling in the way Mulder is lightly stroking her hair.

 

“Pfft, Scully,” he says in her ear. “Since when do we play by the rules?”

 

—-

 

Mulder shakes Scully’s shoulder gently, rousing her from sleep. She blinks blearily up at him, and he has to laugh at her tired confusion.

 

“Time is it?” she mumbles.

 

“11:57,” he says. “I promised you a ball drop and a midnight kiss.”

 

“Mm,” says Scully, glancing up at the TV mounted on the wall, where Mulder’s turned on the New Year’s Eve party. “Not the same without Dick Clark,” she mumbles.

 

“Gotta make do with what we got, Scully,” says Mulder, smiling down at her. How is it possible, he wonders, to adore somebody this much?

 

They watch as the clock gets closer and closer to midnight. 

 

“Ten,” starts the countdown. “Nine...eight...seven...six…”

 

Mulder looks from the TV and cups Scully’s cheek and turns her towards him.

 

“Three...two...one.”

 

He kisses her and she kisses him back, adoration flowing between them. 

 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the next day,” Mulder whispers against her mouth. “But you’re here now, and I am so lucky to have had the chance to love you.”

 

“I love you, too,” she says quietly.

 

“So lucky,” Mulder reiterates, and kisses her again, and again, and again, while they go together into the brand new year.

 

—-

 

Scully’s doctor shows up in her room around 8 am. She takes in the sight of Scully and Mulder tangled around each other, not sure where one of them starts and the other ends.

 

“I got your blood test results back, Dana,” she says, flipping open a file.

 

Both Mulder and Scully look to her expectantly. “And?” says Mulder impatiently.

 

The doctor looks back up with them and shakes her head incredulously. 

 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she says. 

 

She smiles.


	16. Chapter 16

It’s weird watching people live like they don’t know they’re dying.

 

Because that’s the truth of the matter, isn’t it? That everyone is facing an end, and the only mystery to it is when it’s going to appear. Maybe it’ll be tomorrow, maybe fifty years, but it’ll come.

 

Scully watches two men standing at a food truck, arguing about something insignificant; maybe it’s money, maybe it’s quality, maybe they just feel like picking a fight, but does it really matter? In the scheme of things? It does to them, but that’s because they don’t know they’re dying.

 

But Scully does. She knows it better than most, and so she breathes in the smell of blooming spring flowers on the trees, and let’s the wind graze past her like she’s welcoming a friend, because who knows when it’ll be the last time she gets to feel it.

 

“Hey there, Miss Pre-Med,” says a familiar voice behind her. She turns around on the bench she’s sitting on and smiles wide at Mulder. She gets to her feet and goes over to kiss him hello. She kisses him a lot lately, and takes a lot of pictures of him doing mundane things. A side-effect of not dying when you were supposed to is a newfound need to hang onto everything you love with a white-knuckle grip.

 

“What’d the doctor say?” he asks, taking her hand in his. Scully thinks her hand spends more time in Mulder’s than it does anywhere else.

 

“No sign of relapse,” she says with an airy smile, and Mulder’s shoulders visibly relax.

 

“Good,” he says, and then lets out a laugh. “Great, even.” His smile fades a little, and Scully furrows her brow.

 

“What is it?” she asks. He shakes his head.

 

“Nothing,” he says, but his expression betrays him.

 

“Something,” Scully insists, nudging his shoulder.

 

Mulder sighs. “I’m just thinking about the chip,” he says. “And about how many answers we still don’t have.” 

 

It’s true—they’re not any closer to understanding the situation than when they first began. Like Alex Krycek had said, the fertility clinic was now nothing but ash, and the files on Scully and the other women have been mysteriously wiped clean from whatever database they’d resided in. Meanwhile, Scully still isn’t sure what the chip in her neck means, or where it’s from.

 

“I don’t mean to sound bitter,” says Mulder. “I’m thrilled that you’re healthy, and if that’s all we ever get out of this quest, then it’ll have been more than worth it, it’s just that sometimes...sometimes I feel like we’re never going to have the answers.

 

Scully regards him for a moment, before reaching into her bag and searching for something. Mulder watches her curiously, as she pulls out a tiny vial of an ashy powder. She holds it up to him, and he shakes his head, confused.

 

“The night you took me to the forest,” she says. “Our first adventure together, when we went alien hunting, there was that stuff on the ground. Do you remember?”

 

“Yes,” says Mulder. “Is that what that is?” He eyes the vial, bemused.

 

“I took a handful before we left, and when I got back to my dorm, I put it in this, and I’ve had it ever since. You know why?” Mulder shakes his head no. “Because I believed that there was an explanation for it, Mulder, and I still do. Just like how I think there’s an explanation for Vegas act Nessie, and our flying, dog-eating cryptid on the outskirts of Annapolis.” 

 

She slides the vial back in her bag, and the two of them start down the path along the Washington Mall. People come and go on either side of them, living their own lives; lives that probably don’t involve monsters, or aliens, or government conspiracies, and Scully finds that she feels sorry for them. 

 

“When I was in the hospital, you told me you were lucky to be able to love me,” she says, watching a father chase a rambunctious toddler into the grass. “If you’re lucky, then so am I, and not just because you saved my life, but because you gave me a new one.” She shakes her head. “What I would have missed,” she whispers.

 

“The feeling’s mutual, Scully. I think we saved each other, and I’m ready to ride this ride as far as it takes us, if you’re up for it too.”

 

Scully smiles up at him, and he smiles back.

 

“The Truth is out there somewhere, Mulder,” she says, with a squeeze to his hand. “Let’s go find it together.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> three years (YEARS) later, here we are. there were times where i thought i'd never finish it, but here we are. thank you so much for sticking with it, and if you're a new reader, thank you so much for reading it at all. i hope you enjoyed it. love me some x-files. 
> 
> last shameless self-promotion: alexkryceksbutt.tumblr.com
> 
> until next time, friends


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